BEATING CANCER TOGETHER – R30 000

When July 2020 arrived, our lives were turned upside down. My husband, Stephen was diagnosed with Colo-Rectal Cancer at the age of 38. This was probably the hardest thing that life has ever thrown at us as a Family.

Stephen was diagnosed with Cancer very unexpectedly. He had Major surgery to remove the tumor 2 weeks later. He then received Chemotherapy every 2 weeks for 6 months in PE and he was then declared “Cancer Free”.

In July 2021 his Cancer came back or it could possibly have been missed on a CT scan.
He then had to undergo Chemo-Radiation treatment which involved 1 session a day for 6 weeks.
This meant that our family had to stay in Port Elizabeth for the full 6 weeks with me still having to work and the Girls having to home school from there. He went to see a Colo-rectal surgeon for a 2nd opinion and was referred to Johannesburg for another Major surgery in Feb last year.

Once again we had to pack up everything and had to stay in Pretoria for 6 weeks while having to work and home school from there. Stephen’s 15 hour surgery was done at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre in Johannesburg, which meant that I had to drive 40min there and 40min back every day to visit him in ICU, but unfortunately the kids were not allowed to visit in ICU.

You would think that this would be the end of the story with a happy ending, but this was not the case:
•    End of March last year we drove back after our 6 weeks in Joburg, but Stephen started bleeding severely in the car about 80km from Colesberg.
•    This meant that the nearest hospital was still 40 min away
•    By the time that we arrived at the hospital Stephen already lost litres of blood and was still bleeding at the time.
•    They luckily had 1 bag of emergency blood which they gave him while waiting for the ambulance to arrive from Bloemfontein.
•    They then rushed him back to the Bloemfontein Medi-Clinic where he had 13 blood transfusions and 4 bags of plasma.
I remember never being so scared in my life when driving back to Bloemfontein in the dark while following the Ambulance, but I somehow managed to keep it together for the sake of our kids. While driving outside one of the towns there was a big lit up Cross on one of the hills and we all felt and said to each other that this is a sign that everything is going to be ok, even though the ICU staff and Doctors were not sure if he was going to make it through the night or not.
•    He was discharged after being in ICU for 6 days, just to be re-admitted with blood clots all the way up his one leg the very next day.

We arrived back home safely and thought that it was the end of a really difficult road, but this was still only part of it:
•    By the end of May his Chemo started again and he unexpectedly ended up in ICU in PE with a highly resistant bacteria, which he picked up in ICU in Joburg. This caused severe life-threatening Sepsis.
•    He was in and out of St Georges Hospital 5 times with Sepsis either just before or after having Chemo from May until November last year. Each time it would be 2 to 3 weeks with me living and working from PE on my own, while the kids had to stay behind in Graaff-Reinet to write exams every time.
•    To make matters worse, the place where I worked stopped paying salaries from February last year until July. It was a very hard road not knowing how to cover all of the bills every month.
•    Despite all of this, we never allowed things to get us down.

With everything he went through, Stephen’s life was saved 8 times in 9 months and we are so grateful for that!

We are turning to crowd funding to please assist our family with being able to pay Medical bills and also with Stephen who has almost reached his Oncology limit with the Medical aid. This means that we will need to pay large co-payments on each Oncology claim for him to be able to finish his Cancer treatments. The co-payments are estimated at about R10 000 per month excluding any Scans. He has had 2 very successful Chemo sessions this month and we would love to be able to finish his treatment and heal the Cancer completely.

Your assistance will be greatly appreciated and it will allow us to beat his Cancer together.

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