Please help save our home

Hello. My name is Sean Kearney. I have only been able to write a somewhat incoherent paragraph for this post. It was the best I could do. A friend of mine whom is very familiar with my reality offered to rewrite and add a lot of context, to properly articulate what has taken place over what has now become a short eleven months. These are his words, and information verified by my wife and children.

It is now December, a time when my family would be full-throttle planning Christmas which for our family is arguably one of the happiest of annual events. The laughter has always been plentiful. And our grandchildren give us that time to partially relive the years raising our own.

Then came the brain tumour, and I am here today asking for your help.

I am 57 years old and have worked all my life for my future, and for that of my wife and our children.

This is an impossible situation whereby I have never been a person to ask for anything. Particularly of this magnitude. In fact, I’m usually the one to offer anything I could for another in need. But now I’m at the other end of that spectrum whereby I am not even able to help myself. As such, all I have worked to have will very soon become a memory. I have no other options, and my world has fallen apart.

Almost exactly one year ago this past October 3rd, we achieved a major milestone. Over the years, we had finally been able to save enough money for the minimum down payment required to buy our first home, for myself and my wife Rose. I had been happily employed for many years with my dream job and my daughter had just moved back to Ontario where we could see her again on a regular basis. Regardless of where we rented, our family always made the house a home. Last year, the difference was we were finally to buy a house.

Then in January 2023, everything changed.

On January 19, 2023, I was unexpectedly laid off, along with, quite literally, 9,999 other individuals from a large corporation. I didn’t see it coming. The very next day, I experienced what would later be identified as a seizure. The first of several that would take place over the next 9-months. Something I had never before experienced. On January 30, I was rushed to hospital following a major seizure. A battery of tests confirmed a 6 cm growth on my brain that was later confirmed to be a Glioblastoma, stage 3. If you’re not familiar with this condition, it is an aggressive type of brain tumour - a highly malignant form of cancer known to spread quickly.

There are no cures.

Surgery took place on February 9th. Its only purpose was to extend my life expectancy. But this was only the beginning of my nightmare. Given the nature of this type of cancer, it’s probably best to describe it as a spider. Its legs are deep within the brain while most of its body was on the surface of my brain, trapped beneath my skull. The surgeons were able to remove most of the tumour’s body but only a small portion of the legs. A more invasive surgery to completely remove the legs would have likely resulted in death on the operating table, or left me completely incapacitated. So the legs remained.

In early March I started a regimen of radiation and chemotherapy to help reduce the effects of the tumour remnants that was still in my brain.

Unexpectedly, around mid June, my family noticed a change in my health whereby my speech was not as coherent, my balance would soon cause me to walk with a cane (which will soon be replaced with a walker given my rapid decline), and my writing abilities were nonexistent. Well beyond spelling mistakes. I couldn’t form a proper sentence to save my life yet only a year earlier I was highly recognized by so many peers over the decades in the Information Technology (IT) field. My one-paragraph attempt to write a go fund me is at the end of this request. Its only reason is to provide a comparison of my friend’s writings to my own, showing the one of many effects this tumour is having on my life.

After my first brain surgery, I was quite coherent and through a friend this past April, I was able to work again in the IT sector. Things were going very well for about four months post-surgery.

In October I was laid off from that new position. Why? Because I had deteriorated so much that I couldn’t even write my own name. Yet in my mind, I saw there were no issues whatsoever. During that time I worked from home because after the second seizure, I lost my license. I have to be seizure-free for an extended period of time. Late October and twice again in November I had more significant seizures. I’ve been back to see the surgeons for another battery of tests and will receive their findings tomorrow, December 6th, to determine if a second surgery is even possible.

In the meantime, I have no savings because that money went into the down payment for the purchase of our home. I am not employable. My doctors have confirmed that I can never work again. I’ve been to the bank to defer one mortgage payment. It was the best they could do. I have registered with the local food bank, and through our church, some meals are prepared for us when possible.

And now my wife and I are now losing our home.

Rose has not worked in more than 20 years and does not have a degree. The income I have ever earned has always been “our” income for a basic lifestyle we have enjoyed over the decades. That has now ended.

These are the reasons why I am writing to you for help.

Rose is by far the best I could ever dreamed to have in my life, and has been brilliant raising our three children. They are now adults, living their own lives, yet we will forever be a close-knit family as if we were still living under the same roof.

The eldest of my two daughters is a single parent of three children. My other daughter lives with her fiancé at the home of her future father-in-law and sister-in-law. My son is living with two friends in an apartment. Realistically, I have nowhere to go, but my eldest daughter has offered for my wife and I to live with her and her children. We’re now in the process of selling all of our possessions.

Please understand that I have left this site as a last resort, after I had exhausted every other option.

I’m trying desperately to keep this house. For the short term for my wife and I. For the long-term, I have to do all I can to make sure my wife and our three adopted family members (two dogs and one cat) can remain in our home. It’s all we have. If this avenue doesn’t come to fruition, we will also have to rehome our animals as we graciously move in with our daughter. Having animals in the company of our grandchildren is an impossibility.

None of this was ever in my wildest nightmares. I am in tears reading these facts my friend has written. I am a good man. I have worked so hard my entire life. My wife and children are my oxygen. And while I knew I would never live forever, what’s now happening had never been on the horizon until that choice was made for me this past January.

If you have reached this line, I sincerely thank you for taking time to read my story. If there are any opportunities for you to help contribute to save my home for my wife and I, my genuine heart-felt appreciation could never be enough.

I will be attaching documents here to validate the aforementioned.

My initial paragraph was as follows:

“2023 has not beena good year for myself or my family. To start with I was let go from Mt dream job in January .the morning after I had a seizure: the cause was a 6 cm tumor on my brain which turned out to be cancerous. I have been told by my doctori am not permitted to work in the meantime. Because of the seizure my license has been revokedI am desperately trying to keep our home. If I could work I would”

With love and gratitude;

Sean and Rose