GoFundMe Campaign: 'Help My Mom Beat Cancer'

The GoFundMe campaign that Giorgia Perotti started for her mother Gina George, has a lofty goal of raising $10,000, but the online fundraising effort isn’t entirely about the money.

Perotti says her mother was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 uterine cancer and another rare form of cancer and needs some financial help. But, the campaign, which to date has raised $2,795, has become a source of inspiration for her mother in her struggle to beat the cancer, she says.

“It’s given her hope,” Perotti says. It’s made her feel a lot better about her treatment.

“If anybody can donate anything, even $1, it makes a difference. It lifts her spirits,” says Perotti, who describes her mother in her post on GoFundMe as “the strongest woman (she) has ever met."

"(The donations) keep her hopeful and keep her motivated,” she says.

George has already had a “radical hysterectomy which was not able to get rid of the entire tumor in her uterus or all the lymph nodes that were cancerous,” according to Perotti’s post on GoFundMe. That was followed by aggressive chemotherapy treatments, which required her to be in the hospital for five days at a time, in addition to receiving radiation every day, she wrote.

“It’s been a roller coaster,” explains 21-year-old Perotti. “The doctor says he’s only seen this kind of cancer one other time. The treatment has been so overwhelming to her system that they are stopping the chemo and just keeping her on the radiation which means the treatments are going to draw out longer.”

Right now, George, 52, a single mother who lives in Allentown with a 16-year-old son, is on an unpaid leave of absence from work and the bills are starting to pile up, her daughter says.  “She needs help now more than ever,” Perotti says.

Perotti says her mother only has a small savings account and that the heating and air conditioning system in her home recently broke down. She says that if the fundraising campaign achieves its goal, in addition to paying other bills, her mom would be able to get the heating system fixed without draining her entire savings account.

“I just want my mom to be able to focus on her treatments,” Perotti says. “She needs all of her energy for that.”

These is just a few of the many local fundraising campaigns hosted on GoFundMe, a Patch partner.