Dr. Jen Simmons reads a letter from her patient June, 40, who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at 37. After a double mastectomy, June learned the cancer spread to her bones and she had three years to live. She's asking for a Golder grant to cover food, a nutritionist, therapy, and help at home.
Questions this video answers
40 years old.
A Friday in November of 2016.
37 years old.
March 2017.
They gave her three years to live.
Chapters
Hi there. It's Dr. Jen Simmons from Real Health MD. I'm so sorry to be missing this Ciscolder foundation luncheon. I do love that time. I love seeing all of you. I love catching up with all of you. I love the fashion. I love the generosity of Boyd's for hosting us every year. But mostly, I love sharing the stories with you. I love letting you see through my eyes, through my lens, through the wonderful work that this foundation does for me, for my patients. This money goes exactly where SIS meant it to go. SIS talked about her tremendous privilege in life and her ability to have people and services that can help her when she's not feeling her best, when she's really experiencing the side effects of treatment and not able to do, do all of the things, have all of the niceties. And I wanted to share a story.
With you this year of one of.
My patients who really exemplifies everything that SIS intended this foundation to be. So I'm going to read you the.
Letter that she had asked me to compose. Dear Sis Golder foundation, my name is June. I'm 40 years old, and I have metastatic breast cancer. I grew up in Delaware County. I had what is increasingly known as a typical childhood. My parents divorced when I was 8. I went to live with my mom. Maybe not the best modeling in terms of health and relationships. She did the best she could. I definitely wouldn't consider my many homes having healthy homes. My mom and I moved eight times. She had lots of boyfriends. I had lots of fast food and alone time, but I never really thought about it. And as I got older, my friends met and married, but I never really thought about it. My friends started careers. I had jobs, but I never really thought about it. Truthfully, I never really thought about my health at all until 2016. It was a Friday in November of 2016. I was in the shower when I felt a lump in my left breast. I was only 37. I was sure it was nothing. I saw my OB GYN the next week. I had a biopsy. The lump in my breast was cancer.
It took me a while to come.
To grips with this. I was only 37, for God's sake. I finally had my double mastectomy in March of 2017. They found a lot of cancer in my breast and in my lymph nodes. They asked me to have a CT scan. That's when they found my cancer had already spread to my bones. They gave me three years to live. Even though they gave me three years to live, I really stopped living. Then I stopped working. I stopped feeling. I rarely left the house. I went for my treatments. I lost my insurance. I missed my treatments. I fell into a deep depression. Three years passed. My studies show that the medicine, which I can't take every day because it makes me feel so sick, seems to be working. I want to start living again, but I don't know how. I need help. I need guidance. I need money. I met Dr. Jen in February. I shared with her my story. She told me, if I want to live, I need to eat real food, lots of vegetables, exercise every day, have a positive outlook, keep my space clean and organized, keep my thoughts clean and organized. I have only known how to eat fast food. I don't even know what to do with vegetables. I need money to meet with a nutritionist. I need money to buy healthy food. Most days I don't have the strength to get out of bed. My friends got me a dog, so I have the motivation to get up every day. All I can do. It's all I can do to make sure that he has walked and fed. Some days I don't even have the strength to do that. The house gets messy with all the dog hair. I need someone to help me clean the house, to take care of the dog when I can't. On the days when I feel good, Dr. Simmons tells me that I need to exercise. I don't belong to a gym. I was never into fitness. I don't have anyone to show me what to do. If I got the Golder Grant, I would use it to buy healthy food, to hire someone to help me clean the house, to hire someone to help me with the dog, to hire someone to partner with me and to motivate me to exercise. But most importantly, I would use the grant to pay for a psychologist to help me work through all these complicated feelings I have about living and dying.
So I hope that you find my story compelling enough to help me, as I desperately need your help. So while I would have loved to be there and share this story with you in person, I hope that even in this instance, it touches you enough to know that what you're doing is incredibly generous, incredibly helpful, and incredibly meaningful. And I hope that I get to see all of you soon. Thanks for listening, and please be generous.
