Lung cancer took Aldona's breath away❗Today she is asking for help❗

My life has been spent listening to others. Today, I have to shout out my own cry for help.

For years, my psychotherapy office was a place where people's dramas found an outlet. I handed out tissues, built hope, and taught my patients how to cope with difficulties even when their world was falling apart. For years, I listened to the heroic struggles of my patients. And today, it is me, as a patient, who needs therapy, but one that cannot be conducted with words. My body has become the arena of a brutal battle, and my opponent is taking my breath away and wreaking havoc on my lungs.

When you help others weather the storm, you don't expect that soon you will be in the eye of it yourself.

Several weeks of exhausting coughing, increasing weakness, and shortness of breath that made me feel as if someone had put a steel hoop around my chest. A few ordinary stairs became an insurmountable obstacle, and I struggled for every breath, as if I were carrying a huge weight on my back. When I finally ended up in the emergency room in Bełchatów, I believed it was just complications, maybe fatigue after my previous thyroid surgery. After all, six months earlier, I had been examined by doctors and was completely healthy. I took care of myself, didn't smoke, and led a normal life with my husband. However, fate had other plans. Instead of reassuring me, the chest CT angiogram brought a verdict. There was a pathological mass and about 100 mm of fluid in my lungs.

Two liters of fluid that try to drown me every three days

The diagnosis sounds like something out of an oncology textbook, but for me it's a daily struggle for every breath of air. G3 adenocarcinoma of the right lung, stage T4N1M1a, metastases to the pleura and suspected changes in the liver. These are not just symbols. It is pain that pierces my chest with every deep breath.

Every three days, my chest was punctured to remove 2–3 liters of fluid from my lungs, restoring my ability to speak without shortness of breath for a moment. My cancer is inoperable, so I underwent VATS, pleurectomy, and talc pleurodesis. These are painful procedures that were supposed to stop this vicious cycle, but my cancer turned out to be extremely insidious. An insertion mutation in exon 20 of the EGFR gene caused the standard targeted treatment to fail, and instead of shrinking, the tumor grew to over ten centimeters.

A smile for the camera that hides the fear of tomorrow

Today, I look at my photos from a year ago and see a woman who loved traveling, gardening, and theater. I still try to smile at my husband and two sons, because they are my fuel to fight... However, maximum doses of chemotherapy, cisplatin, pemetrexed, and radiation therapy have taken away not only my strength but also my independence. The neuropathy has become so severe that I am now completely dependent on the care of my loved ones. I, who have always been a rock for others, now need help with the simplest of tasks.

I am still the same woman, a loving wife, mother, and passionate about my work. I want to live. I don't want to become an addition to the statistics in the treatment implemented. I want to return to my garden and to my patients who are still waiting for me. However, I need support to do this.

Cancer took away my health and my ability to function. Don't let it take away your hope.

I am raising funds for non-reimbursable medications, specialized neurological rehabilitation that will allow me to regain control of my body, and assistance with daily functioning to relieve my family.

My husband and sons do everything they can to keep me from feeling how bad things are, but I can see the fear in their eyes, which cannot be hidden. We cannot bear this burden alone, which becomes more and more overwhelming with each passing day.

Please stand by us. Your support gives me a chance to stop thinking about survival and start thinking about being a wife and mother to them again, not just a patient requiring round-the-clock care. Help me make this diagnosis just a part of my story. Help me move on and plan at least for the immediate future.