Holistic Hope4Cancer Treatment

I am Tiffany Gammaro and am fundraising for a Holistic, whole-body cancer treatment for Kimberly Bartolacci.

On October 21st of 2021, Kim’s journey began when an unknown tumor ruptured and required an emergency liver resection. Kim was very blessed to have survived the emergency surgery thanks to the fast actions of talented doctors and even helicopter pilots! She and her family focused on a full recovery when initial post resection scans came in clear. Unfortunately, the pathology results came back with a formal diagnosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) which is essentially a type of liver cancer. This news came as quite a shock to all of her family and friends as Kim, a then 38-year-old wife and mother lives a healthy lifestyle and had no underlying liver issues.

The results of Kim’s three-month follow-up scans showed that the cancer had spread and metastasized into her stomach lining resulting in the official prognosis of stage 4 cancer. This prognosis is challenging to digest simply because there is currently no cure for liver cancer and the latest statistics indicate that the 5-year survival rate is about 12%.

Anyone who has had experience with cancer, be it from personal experience, a family member, or perhaps a friend knows that cancer is a process. A process of finding the right doctors and the right drug therapies, working with insurance, all the while looking at dietary changes, and mustering up the energy to exercise. For Kim, this particular part of her journey started with a 3-month immunotherapy regimen at Moffit Cancer Center in Tampa. When it was ultimately determined that this specific treatment was not effective, she and her family made the decision to move her primary care to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

In May 2022 Kim was accepted into a phase one clinical trial with the hope that the advancement of medicine could ultimately be the treatment she was looking for to effectively cure her liver cancer. Kim spent several months flying back and forth from her home in Sarasota, FL to Houston, TX battling what can only be described as very debilitating side effects. Unfortunately, those severe side effects ended up forcing her to cease the trial and subsequently landed her in the hospital for most of September. Furthermore, she has been battling long-term side effects which have changed her overall health. From there, the journey continued as she was put on another treatment plan which is considered a “standard of care” drug. It worked incredibly well at first, allowing her tumor marker (AFP) to plummet from 9,500 down to 1,700 in a mere 5 weeks. Normal AFP is less than 40, and over 400 is considered “extremely high.” The promising progress eventually stopped working, and the AFP started to climb again. In December 2022, a follow-up scan confirmed the treatment was officially no longer working, and the cancer was growing again. After a month-long battle with the insurance company, Kim now has the approval for a new immunotherapy regimen that was just FDA-approved! During this recent break in treatment, to battle with bureaucratic pieces, her cancer has grown substantially...

With all of that said, Kim is a naturally optimistic and glass-half-full person who can also look at her diagnosis from a positive lens in that she does not have any underlying liver conditions and is leveraging the fact that she is a generally young and healthy person. At the end of the day, Kim has a strong desire to live her life and be there for her family, the center of which is her 4-year-old son, Perry.

Kim is brave and mentally strong. She is ready to put in work to fight her cancer on all fronts. She has changed her diet and incorporated many holistic healing modalities into her life since her cancer diagnosis. She has enjoyed learning about alternative and complementary healing and is looking to incorporate even more integrative medicine into her healing path to come at this cancer from every angle possible.

She has found a wonderful and comprehensive center for integrative healing in Mexico. This means she can start her new immunotherapy regimen AND participate in a full submersion non-toxic healing clinic at the same time. She feels strongly that the body is an incredible healing machine when given the right conditions. Her ultimate hopes and goals are to make it to the clinic in Mexico and have a miracle healing for her cancer diagnosis. She is looking to make any necessary changes to her lifestyle to affect the root cause of her disease that is currently within her body.

Thus far Kim, Christian, and her family have been able to fund her holistic healing out of pocket with the generous support of loved ones as insurance does not cover these types of alternative therapies.

Candidly, the cost to attend the healing center in Mexico is not something they can do on their own at this point, and we are looking to support them in their goal to ensure that Kim aggressively fights this disease from every angle. All funds will be shared with Christan Bartolaccoi as beneficiary and be sent to their joint medical account for the treatments in Mexico, and Texas and travel costs associated with getting to and from treatments.