Help!

Fresh off a day of giv­ing thanks for the bless­ings that have been bestowed on my fam­ily, I would like to share the story of another fam­ily — one that is in need of your help.    Bryan Mad­den is an Ohio native who is cur­rently liv­ing with his new bride, Tashi Nicole King in Col­orado.  I came to know Bryan through his mother Pam Mad­den, an amaz­ing woman, fam­ily friend, and the cer­ti­fied nurse mid­wife who helped bring both of my chil­dren into this world.  If you fre­quented Trader Joe’s in Ket­ter­ing in the last few years, you may remem­ber Bryan as the “cool guy with the dreads” who was always happy to help peo­ple.  Bryan and Tashi are going through a dif­fi­cult time and they could use your help.  Their story is being chron­i­cled on the web at http://www.tashiking.blogspot.com/ The fol­low­ing text is from a recent post on the site and it explains their situation:

As many of you know by now, Tashi Nicole King has been diag­nosed with Stage IV Breast Can­cer. You may remem­ber Tashi from Boul­der High School (Class of 1993) or her brother Amani (Class of 1987). Tashi mar­ried after col­lege and moved to Nicaragua where her daugh­ter, Xola Rose (pro­nounced Zola) was born in May of 2003. Xola was born with a genetic dis­or­der called Tri­somy 13. Eighty per­cent of babies born with this dis­or­der die within their first month. How­ever, thanks to Tashi’s unre­lent­ing spirit and her deter­mi­na­tion to do every­thing pos­si­ble to care for her, Xola lived hap­pily until she was almost 5 years old. On Feb. 27, 2008 Tashi held Xola for the last time; roughly a year and a half before being diag­nosed with cancer.

On August 15, 2009 Tashi mar­ried Bryan Patrick Mad­den. Bryan has been a tremen­dous sup­port to Tashi since los­ing her daugh­ter and they were look­ing for­ward to start­ing a fam­ily of their own. They were sav­ing to start build­ing a house on their moun­tain prop­erty out­side of Boul­der. How­ever, these plans have all been put on hold due to the cancer.

Tashi had a sin­gle mas­tec­tomy to remove the tumor in her breast, lymph node dis­sec­tion and a port placed, dur­ing which time her lung col­lapsed and she had emer­gency surgery. The can­cer has spread to her liver and was found in sev­eral addi­tional lymph nodes. Cur­rrently, Tashi is under­go­ing an inten­sive course of chemother­apy, which will be fol­lowed by radi­a­tion and likely more surgery.

In the mean­time, Tashi con­tin­ues to make pay­ments on her deceased daughter’s med­ical bills. In addi­tion, Tashi’s own med­ical bills are begin­ning to pile up and this is only the begin­ning. Unfor­tu­nately her stu­dent health insur­ance pol­icy is lim­ited and has almost reached it’s max­i­mum pay­out. This means that Tashi will effec­tively be with­out insur­ance coverage.

Only one week after hav­ing the mas­tec­tomy, Tashi went back to work because of her finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. My hope is that through people’s gen­er­ous dona­tions we can raise enough money for Tashi to focus on get­ting well rather than wor­ry­ing about mount­ing med­ical bills. She con­tin­ues to attend Naropa Uni­ver­sity where she is fin­ish­ing a Master’s degree in Somatic Coun­sel­ing Psychology.

If you are able, please make a dona­tion to the Tashi King Fund. Even if you can only afford $10 in these dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times, please con­tribute. Any amount, whether its $10 or $100 will help. For­ward this email to any­one who may know Tashi or Amani, those who have been touched by breast can­cer, fel­low women, moth­ers, and/or any­one else who might care. Thank you so much for your support!

On behalf of Bryan, I am ask­ing you to help them to get through this dif­fi­cult time by mak­ing a dona­tion and shar­ing this story with oth­ers who may be able to lend a hand.