Leah Bennett
My name is Nicole. I am a single mother, and I am fighting cancer alone.
I never wanted to be the person asking strangers for help. I worked. I paid my bills. I was the one who showed up for everyone else. Then the diagnosis came, and everything I had built started falling apart in weeks.
There is no second parent in this house. No second income. When I am in the infusion chair, nobody is earning. When I am too weak to stand, my kids are the ones bringing me water and pretending they are not scared.
Chemotherapy takes everything. The nausea, the exhaustion, the days I cannot get off the bathroom floor. And on top of that: co-pays, prescriptions, the rides to the cancer center, the rent that does not pause because I am sick.
Last month I had to choose between a prescription and groceries. I bought the groceries, because my children eat first. Skipping medication is how a treatable cancer becomes a terminal one — and I know that, and I still had to make that choice.
I am not asking for a comfortable life. I am asking for time with my children. Time to see them grow up. Time to be their mother instead of a patient they visit.
Here is exactly what your help does: $20 buys the anti-nausea medication that lets me keep food down. $50 covers a co-pay or a ride to the cancer center. $100 fills the fridge for a week when I cannot work. $250 keeps the lights on and the rent current so my kids are not moved out of their home in the middle of treatment.
If you cannot give, please share. Every share reaches someone who can, and that is how I have made it this far at all.
To everyone who has already helped: you have no idea what it means to be a mother who was drowning and felt someone reach for her hand. Thank you. Please don't stop now. 🙏
— Nicole
