My name is Betty Hughes. I’m 37 years old and in stage 2 breast cancer; I’m undergoing chemo treatments. Now it’s hard to explain the process of going through cancer, but it puts a struggle on everything in your life. It’s hard to figure out how to live your life around treatments and the side effects of the chemo and the extra trips and doctor appointments and trying to keep life as normal as possible for your family. It doesn’t just affect me it affects my whole family. The extra expenses are crazy, and you would not believe how much comes along with the extra travel and the extra expenses of personal items that you have to have because of the side effects and having to purchase items like head covering wigs when you start losing your hair it’s just that as a mother I feel like there’s so much more than I need to do for my kids and they understand, but at the same time I don’t want to have them have to be going through this with me and also them having the extra stress on them of wondering where groceries are going to come from or just simple things like that. I would just like to be able to relieve some of that unnecessary stress that can cause this extra worry for my kids. It’s just so unfair. I’m trying to work part-time to keep things from getting so behind, but when you’re having side effects like I’m having from the chemo treatments, it’s hard to work and keep yourself going at the same time, and when doctors take you off work there’s nothing you can do that’s just that much more you have to try to make up for when it comes to bills and groceries and travel
