Rumo a recuperação/Mercuri's Road to Recovery

Mercuri's Road to Recovery

My husband Agostinho Mercuri underwent an 8-hour surgery to remove a stage IV gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) on October 10th, 2019. Today I heard from the doctor that he’ll be discharged soon and we are really looking forward to the road ahead. I’m setting up this campaign to give us a little fuel for us to hit the road again which we shall do with great joy. I chose the trustworthy Brazilian crowdfunding website Kickante (used by institutions such as Doctors Without Borders) because platforms like GoFundMe do not have partnerships in Brazil yet. Our goal is to raise BRL$15.000 Brazilian Reals which is approximately USD$ 3.700 *

*For those of you who may have tried to contribute through the platform but couldn't, a friend suggested Western Union, so if any of you would like to contribute this way, here’s my information:

Sandra Minori Yamamoto

ID number: 13376358-4 

Country: Brazil

When Mercuri was first diagnosed back in July 2017, the tumor was too large to be surgically removed and for two years he did target therapy with a drug called Imatinib. It was a rough road dealing with the disease itself and the side-effects which included being bedridden for 8 months at the start of treatment and then undergoing more than 34 invasive procedures to remove fluid from his peritoneum. In the beginning of 2019, he had pneumonia which turned into sepsis. We overcame that episode but then the tumor began to grow again. Bedridden since July, he was hospitalized on September 27th. On October 10th, a group of blessed surgeons undertook the challenge of trying to remove the tumor in a very complex and risky surgery. And it worked!!!Despite him being treated in the public health system, we have accumulated debts for many reasons including the simple fact that as patient and full-time caregiver we haven’t been economically active for a while. Out of this perception of how hard it can get for families that are hit by a disease such as cancer, we actually created an app called Hey Amigo to connect patients and volunteers who can provide assistance for free and in a safe manner. In the MVP of the app, patients will be able to request car rides and accompaniment in medical procedures. 

We developed this initiative through our volunteer work and the work of a great team made up of one app developer, one webmaster and one doctor. Because of how sick he was, Mercuri missed all the big dates, including our presentation at Google Campus in August and the official announcement of a partnership between Hey Amigo and the Rehabilitation Institute of the Medical School of the University of Sao Paulo last weekend. But he shall be there in the next events. For over a quarter of a century, Mercuri and I have walked on many roads. We walked. We walked. And we walked. And your contributions, no matter the amount, will certainly give us support for us to keep on walking, now on the road to recovery, to a new life. 

Thank you so much.

Love,

Haikaa