Tori's Tethers: Support Tori Through Cancer Relapse

Hi everyone. For those who don’t know me, my name is Callan, and I’ve had the honor of holding Tori’s heart for nearly 2 years this February. My girlfriend is a lot of things: an incredible writer, a sweet mom to our two fur babies, a gifted communicator, an outspoken activist, an eccentric witch, a boundless dreamer, a cheesy jokester, and so much more. Unfortunately she’s also now a cancer patient for the second time, after her Myelofibrosis and MDS/MPN Overlap Syndrome relapsed in October of this year.

While she’s endured this before, the toll it’s taking on her body is nothing like she’s ever experienced. Her cancer is progressing fast, so to give her the best chance of fighting this, we have to meet this with an equally aggressive treatment plan.

As result of all of this, Tori has to take short term disability from work while also going through an incredibly costly treatment plan. Though she’s able to retain her health insurance and a portion of her salary while out on leave, we’re raising money to help lower the financial burden on our little family throughout this crisis. There’s absolutely no pressure to give - especially for those that have already purchased something from our Amazon wishlist - but for those who want to support us financially, donating here is the best place to do so.

For full financial transparency, we’re asking for $30,000 to help us with the following costs over the next year. $2,000 will go towards paying Tori’s out of pocket health insurance deductible for the year, $1400 will go towards massage therapy treatments that help Tori to manage her extreme pain, $22,000 will go towards offsetting Tori’s salary lost to help pay for bills such as groceries, gas, rent, and her car payment, and the remaining $4,600 will go towards miscellaneous cancer expenses, such as medications, disability aids, symptom relief tools, and wigs. Any unused funds will be donated to local nonprofit and mutual aid groups including the Ulman Foundation, the Baltimore Safety Drive, Baltimore Queer Community Response, and local patient GoFundMes.

If you’d like to help but cannot afford to give financially, please consider sharing this page and signing up for one of the support roles in Lotsa Helping Hands. We’re looking for folks to help with pet care, household chores, shopping for us, preparing meals, coming with me to appointments, and more!

This has been a really difficult time for Tori and for me too. Having to watch the person you love the most in this world go through the worst thing they've ever went through, all over again, is gut wrenching. This time around, both the disease and side effects of treatment have been much harder on Tori than it was during her first round. It's easy to feel helpless in this situation, but I find power in identifying the things I can control and I hope that you might too.

We named this supportive community "Tori's Tethers" because you all help ground Tori, and me, in so many different ways during this really difficult time. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for whatever support you can offer us.

Thank you and we love you all ♥