The Moments We Live For

Please Support My Fundraiser " The Moments We Live For" so together we can sponsor a Team Maggie's Dream Grant for Giving Tuesday as well as Christmas.  A $2,500 grant will help provide a young man or woman the opportunity to "Keep The Dream of Family Alive" prior to cancer treatment. The very life saving treatment they need to save their life can also leave them childless.  By preserving their fertility through harvesting eggs or sperm banking they will have the opportunity to have a baby after battling cancer. 

Here's my story:

                                          The Moments We Live For

Life is full of moments. More specifically about 20,000 moments in one day, 500 million moments in an average 70 year life, and a countless number of defining moments that we can only put into numbers if you truly sit and think about your lifetime of moments thus far. Those are all moments that contain the past and present of good times, troubled times, and mediocre times. These are all filed away into our mental cabinet of how our life has unraveled for us up until this very second of time. However, humans have the tendency of not realizing the moment they’re in until it has become a memory, just as I had over the summer of 2022.

On May 23rd, at age 18, I was diagnosed with Stage One Clear Cell Adenocarcinoma of the Cervix. This is a rare but aggressive type of cancer that affects women in their 40s or older (making me a rare candidate to be affected) and most caused by a drug called DES to prevent miscarriages. However, this drug was banned by the FDA in November of 1971. On May 17, the tumor was found in my cervix, and I was rushed into emergency surgery to have it removed after significant blood loss from the vascular tumor. It was on May 23rd, during my final week of senior year, that they diagnosed me with my cancer.   It was in that moment I knew my life would be changed forever, but I got to choose whether it would be for the better or for the worse. After endless doctors’ appointments and debates upon what kind of treatment to even use on me and my cancer, we ultimately decided upon a radical hysterectomy to remove my reproductive tract except for my ovaries since it gave me the best chance at remission. But that also meant that at age 18 I lost my ability to have a family before I ever had the chance to even think about what I wanted in my future as far as family goes. I was presented with the option of IVF before having to start radiation, which was likely to damage my eggs making it so I wouldn’t have been able to harvest any at all. I chose to do IVF before radiation but after finding out insurance wouldn’t cover my IVF charges, I was faced with the fact that having kids wouldn’t be in the picture for me at all. However, it was in that moment when I chose to do research for grants that would help people like me cover the funds to have eggs harvested to one day have kids of my own. In my endless hours of determination to find a way to make IVF possible, I was connected to Team Maggie’s Dream for a Cure. After submitting my application and praying for an outcome, they chose me to be a recipient of a grant to help cover my IVF costs! In that moment, I was so happy I was in tears. I now have eggs harvested and froze for the future when I’m ready for a family and it is all in a HUGE thank you to Team Maggie’s Dream. Without all the amazing people behind this organization and all of their generous sponsors and donations, I would not have the opportunity to keep my dream of a family alive.

On September 16th, I reached the toughest finish line I have ever been faced with. After four months of fighting cancer, it was my last round of radiation, and I got ring the Radiation Bell signifying I am officially in remission! It was in that moment I had realized I subconsciously chose to make this experience change me and my life for the better. I realized that it wasn’t the summer I had planned, but it was a journey that taught me more about the power of positivity, courage, bravery, and living in every single moment than any other experience could have.

I have always been a huge believer in living in the moments life gives you because you never know when it might be your last. However, fighting cancer and realizing that my number of moments left could have been taken, taught me that I wanted to live truly for every moment I had in my lifetime with all of my being because those moments are what I want to look back on one day and say to myself “This is a life I can hang my hat on”.

So now, what moments will YOU live for?

P.S. Always believe in miracles 😉

With love,

Kata 

Team Maggie For A Cure is a the only Nationwide 501(c)3 that provides support, education and financial assistance for young men and women to preserve fertility after a cancer diagnosis. 

Please join me in raising money so a young adult cancer patient can have the chance of having children after battling cancer, just as I and 263 others were given.