Filipina teacher battling breast cancer needs financial help

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A fellow Filipino teacher battling breast cancer is in desperate need of financial assistance.

The friends of Roane April Joy Dean Rafols, a Filipina teacher who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018, call the big hearted fellow ‘kababayans’ in Thailand to extend monetary aid for April’s medical treatment.

According to an FB post shared by Diane Marinas, April has been battling breast cancer since 2018. She had two rounds of chemotherapy, totaling 24 sessions, during that year and was in remission for two years. But the cancer moved to her liver in 2020, and she had to go through another round of chemotherapy.

In May 2021, another tumor was discovered and she is now undergoing another round of treatment. Despite the condition and through all her therapies, April must continue to work as a teacher in Thailand to be able to keep the health benefits that allow her to receive treatments.

In the same post created by Ruth Marie Grino-Watson for Go Fund Me, she said that April has the opportunity to take Fulvestrant, an alternative medicine advised by her doctors which costs at least 750,000 baht ($24,000.00), hence she is asking for any amount of help so April “get this chance for treatment and to live a normal life…….a chance for any life at all.”

Filipina teacher battling breast cancer — **SHOW MUST GO ON**. *Despite her condition, April must continue to work as a teacher in Thailand to be able to keep the health benefits that allow her to receive treatments.*

Call for help to fellow Filipinos

Here’s the letter originally posted in Go Fund Me initiated by Ruth Marie Grino-Watson shared in SWD Kapamilya FB group page:

Dear Fellow Filipinos with big hearts,

I am humbly asking for help for my good friend Roane April Joy Dean Rafols. April has been battling breast cancer since 2018. In that year she underwent two rounds of chemotherapy, 24 sessions. She was in remission for two years, closely monitoring her labs, but in 2020 the cancer spread to her liver and she endured another round of chemotherapy. In May 2021 another small tumor was found and she is now going for yet another round. Through all these treatments, April must continue to work at her job as a teacher in her adopted country of Thailand, to maintain the health benefits that allow her to have any treatment at all.

Battling cancer is hard but battling cancer in another country without any family members to surround you is harder.

As with so many cancer patients, this chemotherapy treatment is a grueling torture that far too often does not work, but breakthroughs have led to alternate cures, and hope is starting to glimmer for those able to access this new medical treatments. April has the chance to try an alternate drug recommended by her doctors called Fulvestrant.

What is Fulvestrant?

Fulvestrant, sold under the brand name Faslodex among others, is a medication used to treat hormone receptor (HR)-positive metastatic breast cancer in postmenopausal women with disease progression as well as HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer in combination with palbociclib in women with disease progression after endocrine therapy.[2] It is given by injection into a muscle.[3]

Fulvestrant is a selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD) and was first-in-class to be approved.[4] It works by binding to the estrogen receptor and destabilizing it, causing the cell’s normal protein degradation processes to destroy it.[4] Fulvestrant was approved for medical use in the United States in 2002 [5] (From Wikipedia).

How much does Fulvestrant cost?

Fulvestrant is still under patent and is not cheap. The full program lasts a year and costs $24,000 with the following breakdown:

Dose ——————————Date—————– Bhat—————— Dollars

First loading dose ————–Month 1————- 100,000————- $3,200.00

Second loading dose———– Day 15 —————50,000 ————–$1,600.00

Last loading dose —————Day 30————— 50,000 ————–$1,600.00

Monthly dose ——————-11 months———– 550,000 ————$17,600.00

Total Cost:———————————————— 750,000 ————$24,000.00

An appeal for a friend battling breast cancer

April can’t afford this treatment on a teacher’s salary and this treatment is not covered by the Thai health insurance system. April needs our help to get this chance for treatment and to live a normal life…….a chance for any life at all. Her options are running out and time is short.

Please join us in raising the money for April’s treatment. Any help you can give will go a long way. If all of us can join in, we can give her this chance! For anyone that cannot support this cause financially, we are calling for prayer warriors to pray for positive outcome and strength as she continue this difficult time in her life.

When April heard about this, she wrote this text:

“Salamat gid sa inyo ni Oppa amiga! This means a lot to me. Thank you for helping me extend my life.”