Friends and family of a Nova Scotia woman with colon cancer are rallying around her as she tries to raise money to get treatment in the United States.
“I'll live in my car, spend every cent, if it means I can be around for my kids,” said Nicole MacHattie.
She's fighting for more time, time to guide her son and daughter, watch them grow up.
Her husband died from suicide three years ago.
Now, MacHattie has Stage 4 colon cancer.
“It's horrible. It's the worst news you could possibly imagine,” she said.
Since her diagnosis last April, she's had chemotherapy, surgery, and more chemo. The cancer spread and her choices shrunk.
“I was told it's inoperable. It's incurable. ‘If you're lucky and you can find a clinical trial you can get yourself into then you might have a chance,’” she said.
Clinical trials didn't pan out so she's going to the U.S.
Friends are fundraising tens of thousands of dollars to cover her treatment.
And Sunday night, they’re throwing a kitchen party.
“There is nothing that I or her tribe will not do to help her. She's fighting this fight with such tenacity and grace and humour,” said her friend Stacia Hatherly.
MacHattie wishes patients like her had more options, and wants at-home screening to start earlier.
“If the screening was 45 or even 40, which makes more sense because we're seeing more and more young people getting colon cancer, I would've been in a completely different situation than I am right now,” MacHattie said.
She's a mother who wants her kids to have a parent.
“When you have two children that rely on you and they're just your heart and soul, you have to do everything you can to stick around for them. They've been through so much,” MacHattie said.
“Already losing their dad — to lose me too — (it’s) not happening.”
