Support Carly's Proactive Battle

Carly is 33. She is part of our girl tribe, our cousin tribe. But when we say cousin in this family, it's more like 'sister'. We talk daily in what has been dubbed a "super-secret-girl-chat". We share our up's and down's, many, many laughs, and most importantly, we always have each other's back.

We have known Carly our entire lives (since she was a tiny little toe head running around in the grass), to be one of the liveliest of our giant bunch, the first to help someone (anyone) in need, always full of sunshine, the first one to start a dance party in your basement, and the last person to ask for help.

Carly is a mother, a daughter, a wife, and a friend. Her soul is beautiful, and anyone who has had the privilege of crossing her path recognizes this within minutes.

Her story:

Sadly, both her grandmother and grandfather passed away from cancers and her father has recently beat two types of cancer.

Carly knew something about this was not right, so she did some research and decided to have genetic testing done before she started a family of her own. She was ready to be PROACTIVE (especially since at the age of 25, she had her first lumpectomy!) In 2021, when her testing resulted as BRCA+, she knew that her chances of breast and ovarian cancer were high, and that it wasn’t an “if she got cancer” situation, but “when would she get cancer” situation and knew what had to be done; she needed to be aggressive to prevent the ‘when’.

She has worked closely with her doctors and started initially with frequent screenings, following everything the doctors recommended. In November of 2023 she noticed a lump. Fast forward through a breast biopsy, multiple ultrasounds, and mammograms, the choice was presented to do a lumpectomy or move forward with the inevitable double mastectomy. Not wanting to go through this stress again, Carly had her PREVENTATIVE double mastectomy in March 2024. The lump was negative for cancer. In a matter of 2 weeks, Carly's life was turned upside down.

Unfortunately, the most aggressive form of breast cancer was growing in a completely different spot…… Stage 1 triple-negative invasive ductal carcinoma. Triple-negative breast cancer is a rare form of breast cancer that still has no targeted treatments. If Carly had not made the decision to be proactive with her health and that lump had not formed, she may have never known this aggressive cancer was in her body. Talk about a good decision-maker!

We are thanking God that her scans and tests have come back negative for the cancer metastasizing…however, in order to make sure it doesn’t come back in the future Carly must go through 12 weeks of intense chemotherapy. These treatments are highly needed preventative care.

On top of the medical bills and per her doctors’ recommendations to not work during this time, the exorbitant cost of keeping cancer away has not only been unexpected, but crippling. And it's not over yet. The next year will continue to bring many more hurdles and eventually a full, preventative, total hysterectomy.

We are setting up this fundraiser in hopes to off-set some of these unexpected costs and show support for our 'always there for anyone' piece of sunshine.

In this family, no one fights alone.

GoFundMe arranged by:

Angela Davis, Jill Frese, Jessica Gilliam, Katie Gleason, Amanda Gosney, Sami O'Shaughnessy, Alicia Smith, Mackenzie Sprecher