Help Nicole Fight Stage 4 Peritoneal Cancer

Nicole is currently in the fight of her life, having recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 Metastatic Peritoneal Cancer.

As friends of Nicole Phelps and her family: daughter Emma, who is 16, and son Spencer, who is 14, as well as their Yellow Lab, Macey, we wanted to share her story with you and see if there is perhaps something small you can contribute to help with her sizeable medical bills.

As background, Nicole tested positive for BRCA gene mutation, putting her at higher risk of being diagnosed with breast and ovarian cancer, a disease that has already taken several members of her immediate family. She made the very difficult decision as a woman to preemptively have a double mastectomy and hysterectomy, to avoid the pain and suffering she watched her aunts, cousins and mother navigate. After suffering through multiple infections and subsequent corrective surgeries through the process of having her breasts, uterus and ovaries removed, she breathed a sigh of relief, believing she’d put the worst behind her. After what Nicole perceived as struggles with extensive weight gain, she finally sought medical advice for her distended abdomen and the weight she’d been gaining despite eating healthy and working out. I was in the room with her and her mother when the oncologist told Nicole that unfortunately she is not gaining weight – that it is fluid she’d been holding throughout her body as a response to ovarian cancer and that “she is the unlucky 1% of women worldwide who still contract the disease despite doing everything right.” It was a heavy day. We were shocked. We were absolutely sick hearing that what she perceived to be weight gain all this time was actually her cancer spreading through her body, moving from the localized ovarian tissue to her peritoneal cavity and to her lungs.

Nicole has had several gallons of this fluid drained from her body over the past week and a half and started chemotherapy on Monday, 6/6.

For those of you who don’t know Nicole, she is a school social worker by day for Mona Shores Public Schools and a DoorDasher hustler by night. Providing the best life for her children has always been her number one priority. Nicole doesn’t rest until she has taken care of everyone else around her. She is literally one of the hardest working women I have ever met and her kids are blessed to have her as their mom. Nicole will work a full day with special needs children, come home to see her dog and kids and to make dinner for her family, then turn around to start DoorDashing in order to give her family the extra income to live a life of rich opportunity and experiences.

With Nicole going through chemo/surgeries until the end of 2022, not only are her medical bills already flowing in but she will no longer be able to zoom around the city to pick up the extra income her family has come to depend on. If there is anything you might be able to contribute to help supplement their financial constraints, we would be very grateful.

Nicole is a strong woman with a heart of gold. Your support and prayers will give her extra courage and strength to keep her spirits up as she continues this fight.

Thank you for reading this.