Sue's Cancer Medical Bills

Hello, my name is Phil Cochran and I am fundraising for my mother Sue Cochran. As many of you know, my mom's battle with cancer took quite a serious turn in July of 2022. Before getting into where we currently stand with medical bills and her overall health, let me give you the full story of how we got to where we are today.

In August 2018, Sue unexpectedly discovered that she had endometrial cancer. At the time the cancer was discovered it was only stage 1 which allowed the doctors to perform a radical hysterectomy in November 2018 to eliminate the cancer. During the next 2 years after the hysterectomy, Sue would go to regular cancer checkups every 3 months and then every 6 months after that. During this entire period of checkups, no cancer was ever discovered.

On July 4th, 2022, as Sue was walking to her car to go to a Fourth of July celebration party, her left leg gave out and completely stopped working. Sue fell to the ground, laying on the driveway in the very hot summer sun, and did not have her phone to call anyone for help. No one driving by her house was able to see her laying on the ground to take notice and help her back up, instead, she spent nearly an hour laying on the hot driveway in direct sunlight. At last, she managed to crawl her way to the front door and using her Alexa device in her living room, called me for help. I immediately left the party, called 911 and met the paramedics at Sue's house. She was then taken to the ER where a doctor noticed she was having difficulty breathing and decided to perform a scan on her lungs. At this point, the doctor determined she had cancer in her lungs and was then transferred to Nashville for further treatment and testing. It was concluded over the next few weeks after extensive testing that the endometrial cancer she originally had in 2018 had metastasized and spread into her lungs and her bones.

Doctors came up with a treatment plan for her which included 10 consecutive days of radiation treatment and then months of chemotherapy. As you can imagine, the chemotherapy took quite a toll on her body with an extreme amount of weight loss, hair loss, fatigue, neuropathy, etc. After the radiation and chemotherapy sessions were completed, she began going in monthly for immunotherapy treatments. The treatment plan the doctors had come up with ended up putting the cancer into remission! Sue has since opted to no longer do immunotherapy due to the major side effects it has caused to her body, often not allowing her to do much at all during the day. Despite stopping the immunotherapy, the cancer is stable and not growing at this time.

Before the incident on July 4th, 2022, Sue had a job that she loved and paid her well. Since then, a combination of cancer and the treatments has impaired Sue's ability to stay on her feet (she uses a cane now) and her energy levels are much lower than they used to be. While progress is being made through physical therapy, she hasn't been able to work since the incident in July 2022. Unfortunately, the medical bills don't stop piling up when you don't have a job and they haven't stopped because of checkups and physical therapy appointments to this day.

Sue anticipates being able to return to work once she regains more energy and gets more readily back on her feet again. At this time, Sue has accrued over $15,000 in medical bills and we anticipate thousands more to come. We are asking family, friends, and the community for any help that they can send her way. If you know Sue, you know she is worth knowing and is such a fun person to be around and she is worth whatever help we can give her.

Thank you to those who have contributed to helping my mom thus far by making meals, babysitting my kids, driving her to appointments, praying, mowing lawns, etc. We sincerely appreciate any help whatsoever in this battle, thank you for reading!

Phil Cochran