Help Jane With Medical Expenses

I have to get something off my chest.

A couple things, actually.

When I was thirteen, my mother Julie was diagnosed with breast cancer. I remember exactly where I was when we found out; sitting on gramma's recliner, staring in blank shock as my mom cried into my gramma's shoulder. It didn't feel real at the time. She was only thirty-seven. She seemed fine. We had a little yellow house in the country where my mom kept a garden and raised her three children.

My mother and a tiny, pudgy me.

Kristin, Lacey, and me. I was a dopey kid.

Over the next three years, it became horrifically real. I went through my awkward teen years in tandem with sitting in waiting rooms, being taken to relatives' houses, and watching my mom slowly lose her hair, then her breasts, and eventually her life. I think I went into shock for the later parts; when my mom had to be moved into her sister's house for around-the-clock care, when she was asleep more than awake, when my sister would beckon me to come "sit with mom", even though when she was conscious she was incoherent, staring dully at The Andy Griffith show on the TV they'd moved to the end of her bed.

We were sitting with her when she finally passed on. She was forty.

A lot of things happened in rapid succession after that. I went from living with gramma for awhile, to my aunt again after gramma passed. My older sister died, years of alcoholism finally doing her in at twenty-seven. I went to three funerals in the space of two and a half years. I graduated high school. I moved to Texas. Slowly, I came out of shock. Life kept going.

I also found out that renaissance faires rock.

Fast forward a decade. I knew that I had to be vigilant about my own health. Someone, during those numb, hazy days either right before or right after mom died, told me that I wouldn't have to worry because 'cancer skips a generation', but I think they were just trying to be kind. I started going in for mammograms at 27, a decade before my mom was diagnosed, as advised. They wouldn't give me one because I was so young, but did an ultrasound at my insistence. I'd spent years in anxiety that the dense tissue I had on one side was actually some kind of tumor, because even though over half of all women have dense tissue, no one ever talked about it or taught me that.

A few years later I ended up at an oncology center because my white blood cells were low, and the hemotologist suggested I do a genetic test since my mother was diagnosed so early in life.

That test came back positive for BRCA-1, a genetic mutation that runs in families and increases the overall risk of developing breast cancer to 84%. More than likely, my gramma had passed it on to her two daughters, since I found out shortly after all this that one of my cousins is now in radiation therapy for breast cancer, too.

The geneticist kindly ran me through my options, including going on a medication that would reduce that percentage a little, getting a mammogram or MRI every six months for the rest of my life and basically waiting for it to happen, or getting preventative surgery. For years, I'd had this thought that if only I had the money, I would go get 'top surgery' so that I wouldn't have this horrible specter looming in my future. I figured that wouldn't be an option for someone who was just worried about getting cancer, but was perfectly healthy. I'd wondered the entire time I was waiting for the test results if I could use it as some kind of justification, if it'd give me a leg up in trying to get surgery.

The moment the geneticist said I could, in fact, have a preventative mastectomy, I asked for a referral to a surgeon. Two days later, I was scheduling a consultation; and a week later at said consultation, I was presented with a list of surgery dates. I chose the earliest one.

T minus 8 days from the initial consultation.

And here we are.

I'm blessed to have insurance through my workplace, but even with that, my out-of-pocket cost is eye-wateringly high. I have options for payment plans and the like, but it's going to make money incredibly tight for months and months; and that's not even factoring in the time I'm going to be out of work recovering. Our lease is going up in April, and the complex wants to raise the rent by 20%, which means we need to move.

Patient Liability Estimate for surgery- not including any charges from the hospital.

I've worked full time at my workplace for over nine years now, and routinely have to take vacations right up against the deadline for using paid leave, because I just don't take a lot of time off. My surgeon tells me that I won't be able to drive for a few weeks post-op, so Ubering is off the table.

We have a lot of fun at work.

I don't like to ask for help-- I've been a strongly independent person my entire life. But this is a non-option. I'm not going to get cancer. There are too many things I haven't gotten to do, to see, to experience. I haven't learned how to ollie! My friend hasn't taught me how to waltz! There are so many kittens who need foster homes! I want to go snowboarding. I want to run a 10k. I want to see what the JWST finds out about the universe.

I ran a couple 5ks last year, so technically I have run 10k already.

I want to live my life without a time bomb strapped to my chest.

Any donations received will go directly towards medical bills, so every little bit counts. Thank you so much for reading this far, and if you can't help financially, sharing this campaign helps a ton too.

Thank you!!!