Our Stories

 “When life happens, you don’t have time to think; you just have to do.”

When her father was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer that had already metastasized to the liver and brain  during the summer of 2014, that’s where Fabiana McCranie found herself. An only child, she was thrust into  the role of caregiver not only for her father, but also her mother.

“She had been diagnosed with vertigo several years ago, and because of her dizziness there are a lot of things  she can’t do, such as drive,” Fabiana says of her mother. “My father was the one who worked to support them, and he took care of a lot of things. When he had to begin radiation and chemotherapy, he couldn’t do all that any more.”

As a nurse at Kendall Regional Medical Center, Fabiana knows how to care for people. But between her job, handling her father’s rapidly deteriorating condition, helping her mother and keeping her own household going, things quickly got out of hand. She knew about the Hope Fund, but it hadn’t crossed her mind to see assistance until coworkers mentioned it as an option.  “When you are doing so much at once, it’s easy to just look at the next thing,” Fabiana says.

Unfortunately, her father died in early September, just a little over two months after his diagnosis. But as she helped her parents through his final illness, knowing that the Hope Fund was there, and receiving that support, meant more than just the dollars in her checking account.  “My father had a lot of medical bills, and between those and everything else there was just so much to deal with,” Fabiana says. “The Hope Fund assistance made life so much easier, because I really didn’t have the means to pay for all that, and the help meant that there was less on my plate during that time. I had to take more time off than I had accumulated in PTO, and so it helped me in that regard as well.”

Having gone through the application process (“so easy and fast,” she says), Fabiana wants to make sure others in her facility and beyond know about the wonderful resource that is the HCA Hope Fund.  “I wouldn’t even consider not donating! The more people who contribute, the more employees who can be helped,” she says. “I think it’s one of the most amazing programs I’ve ever seen. I have worked in big corporations before, and never had anything like this with the means of helping employees so directly. I recommend to everyone that they learn how it works, and contribute.”