A Daughter’s Plea: Help a Dying Mother Make One Final Family Journey to California

Iva and Brandi

For Brandi Church and her family, the last few days have been filled with the kind of heartbreak no family is ever ready to hear.

Doctors recently told her mother, Iva Coffelt, that the treatments meant to fight her cancer are no longer working. The chemotherapy drug oxaliplatin, they said, has taken such a devastating toll on her body that continuing it would do more harm than good. After what Brandi described as days of prayer, tears, and painful conversations, her mother made the difficult decision to stop that portion of treatment.

“She will continue Panitumumab and her chemo pills,” Brandi explained, “but those will only slow things down. They won’t save her.”

Now facing a prognosis of six months to a year, Brandi’s mother has one wish: to spend time surrounded by all of her children and grandchildren while she still can.

She hopes to travel to California to see her daughter Autumn and her family. The family is also trying to bring Brandi’s brother and his daughter together as well — creating what may be the last opportunity for every member of the immediate family to be in the same place at the same time.

But even getting there is complicated.

Because of a high risk of blood clots, doctors have warned that flying is too dangerous. Instead, Brandi must drive her across half the country despite the exhaustion and physical strain that comes with advanced cancer treatment.

“She isn’t asking for comfort. She isn’t asking for ease,” Brandi wrote. “She isn’t asking for anything except the chance to see her family whole one last time.”

Brandi said she works part-time at a front desk job and does not have the financial ability to cover the costs of gas, lodging, and travel needed to make the trip happen.

“This is the only thing she asks for,” she wrote. “The only thing she talks about. The only thing her heart is holding onto as her body grows weaker.”

The family has created a GoFundMe in hopes the community can help make that final reunion possible.

Those wishing to donate can find the fundraiser here:

*Please note that Brandi is publisher Kym Kemp’s niece.