Help Tabitha Fight Cancer!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Her insurance is only going to pay for 50% of the cost of her treatment.

Hi, my name is Tammy and I want to share my daughter’s story with you. Tabitha is 42 years old and is one of the strongest, most caring, loving, hardest working women I have ever known. Her focus has always been on taking care of those around her, never asking for or expecting anyone to take care of her. Her sister was not able to care for her daughter who was born with autism so Tabitha took the baby and raised her. She is the main provider for her family of 4.

She has helped the homeless by making sandwiches and taking them to the areas where they camp out. She has done coat drives and blanket drives and taken them to those in need. She makes packages of feminine needs items and keeps them with her. When she sees a homeless woman she gives them one of the packages. She also keeps Narcan with her and last year saved a man’s life. He was laying in the road and instead of driving around him like others were doing, she got out and helped him and called an ambulance. We need more caring people like her in this world.

A few days ago she called me to tell me she has uterine cancer. Today she went for an ultrasound and the tumor is larger than a golf ball. Next Friday they are going to biopsy around the tumor to see if the cancer has spread. If the cancer has not spread, they will be able to do a hysterectomy. If it has spread, we do not yet know what the treatment will be.

The doctor has told her she will be out of commission for 6-8 weeks with the hysterectomy. She has no vacation or sick time available to help her through this. On top of her loss of pay, she is going to incur some large co-pays and need medication. She is so stressed about being able to take care of her family, she is talking about postponing any treatment until after the first of the year when she will have 2 weeks of vacation pay available. The loss of 6-8 weeks of income will cause her to lose her home.

Your children are not supposed to die before you do. We lost her brother and her sister just over 10 years ago. I cant handle losing her too. PLEASE help her to be able to take care of her family and get the treatment she needs.

We know her minimum time off work will cost her over $8,000 in income. On top of that she will have medical bills. As of right now we do not know the exact amount of the medical bills, but we all know cancer treatment is not cheap. I will update the financial expectations for her treatment as we receive more information. If less money is needed I will lower the goal accordingly. The co-pays for biopsies to see if the cancer has spread is $360 and it may take another week for the results and a plan of action.

UPDATE

Friday they did 6 biopsies to see if the cancer has spread. They said it could take up to 2.5 weeks to get the results because of so many. She tried to go to work Monday even though they told her to take two weeks off due to the type of work she does. She is a truck driver doing tanker work so she has to do a lot of climbing and lifting heavy hoses. She started bleeding really bad and had to come home and is taking the rest of this week off. Hopefully she will be able to work next week.

UPDATE 11/14/23

The doctor has asked her to come in on Thursday to get the results of the biopsies they did to see if the cancer has spread. Please pray that the results are not bad.

UPDATE 11/16/23

The results of the biopsies are in. The cancer has not spread through her cervix. There are pre-cancerous lesions, so they caught it in time. They will no need to do a full hysterectomy. Instead she have a 40 minute surgery to remove the tumor and cervix. The downtime will not be anywhere near as long but her insurance will not cover a lot of the cost of the surgery. Considering she has a family to support and was living paycheck to paycheck before the cancer, she still needs help and appreciates every dollar given and every share.

UPDATE 11/17/23

SURGERY IS SCHEDULED. Tabitha’s surgery is scheduled for December 13th. She is going to come home for Thanksgiving, thanks to her best friend paying for the trip, but will be out of commission for Christmas. I know she was hoping the surgery would be after the new year because her insurance will cover more then. Like I told her, her health is the most important thing. Having to take time off work, and copays don’t matter if you are risking your life over them.