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Cassandra Kauffman hasn't added a story.
Dotty is a mother to Cassandra (me), Brandon and Shana. She is a grandmother to Shane, Carrah, Emma and Eric. She was a devoted wife to her late husband, Albert, for 38 years. She is a loving sister to Ginny, Margie, Donna, Richard, Phil and her late brother Bobby. She is a daughter to her late mother, Margaret, and her late father, Robert. And, she has some very close friends, like Bobby and Chris.
But, most of all she is in a battle for her life. The past few years have been like a never-ending nightmare for her. In the beginning of last year (2013), our family found out that my father, Al, had end stage liver cirrhosis. It wasn't caused by hepatitis or alcohol, it was some obscure recessive gene. But, it caused him to get sick very quickly and God called him back on June 14, 2013.
Grieving, my mother started feeling like she had the flu. There would be times she felt nauseous and could not get out of the house. For those of you who know my mother, she is not a person to sit around and feel sorry for herself. She has battled through a major heart attack in her 40’s (she had to be resuscitated at least 3 times), she had heart bypass surgery (which led to severe blot clots in her legs), she has spinal stenosis, she has fibromyalgia, and she had reflux. Many people can’t live with just one of these conditions, but she has all of them.
So, in September 2013, the symptoms had gotten so bad – she couldn’t walk or hardly talk – we convinced her to go to the hospital. In the hospital they told her that her sodium level and electrolytes were depleted. So, they put her on a sodium drip and she started to feel better. During the process and the testing, they did a chest xray. The hospital didn’t make it seem like anything at the time, but told her to get it checked out. And, being the stubborn woman she is, she didn’t want to continue staying in the hospital. She was feeling better and she wanted to go home.
Her new-found wellness was short-lived and she was back in the hospital the next weekend. This time, we convinced her to stay so they could biopsy the tumor. By this time, we also had a strong feeling as to what the mass in her lung was.
After more tests and more doctors, finally, she was told what was wrong. She had extensive small cell lung cancer. It had metastasized to her adrenal glands, the other lung, her spine and her bones. It was devastating to everyone. I think it knocked her down more than she anticipated and she began planning for the end.
But again, being stubborn, something changed and she decided she wanted to live. She wanted to live to see her grandchildren get bigger, she wanted to see her children get older, she wanted to travel, she found a new companion to help her in ways some of us could not, and she decided she wanted to fight!
So, she had the chemo sessions set up (we even got a second opinion along the way), she went through the grueling sessions followed by the awful side effects. All this time, her bank account being depleted. My father, God rest his soul, did not have life insurance, did not have his last expenses taken care of, and did not provide my mother with any security after his passing.
In February 2014, she had her last chemo session and then they told her she was officially in remission. She started making plans to travel with her companion and do things like going to car shows and museums – things she had never done before. Shortly after her “remission”, her beloved dog (a toy poodle named Kadey) died of congestive heart failure. We always joked that her and my father loved that dog more than us kids, so to say it was devastating was an understatement.
BUT….in early May, she started feeling the same way she did last year. She was nauseous, she had a hard time talking and she was tired all the time. She ended up in the hospital in June (just last week) and her sodium was depleted. Then, the news she thought she wouldn’t hear again for a long time, the cancer was back.
Her remission only lasted two months…TWO MONTHS…
It was barely enough time for her to catch her breath. So, now the chemo starts again and she is struggling to find a way to pay for what she needs. We all try to help as much as possible, but the costs are ridiculous.
So, this brings me to the reason for this fundraising. The reason is to help her with whatever expenses she will have, from prescriptions to copays to whatever….
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