🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
A fundraiser has been launched to support a Georgia woman with "an incredible spirit" after she was diagnosed with cancer.
Kim Gilliam Steele is a quadruple amputee who lost her hands and feet in 2016 after narrowly surviving septic shock—a reaction to some medication that left her in a coma.
Speaking to Georgia news outlet 11 Alive (WXIA), Steele said she was initially "devastated" but changed her view after attending an inpatient rehabilitation program.
"They taught me how to do everything that I needed to know. And I walked out of there when I left", she said.
Since then Steele has taken care of herself, drives a regular vehicle and lives alone with her three dogs on a limited income. Since 2019 she has been on a waiting list to make her home handicap-accessible.
On top of this she has written a book, gone skydiving and talks to fellow amputees daily.
She documents all this on her YouTube channel, which she hopes will help other amputees.
Recently, Steele was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), a type of cancer in which the bone marrow makes a large number of abnormal blood cells. The American Cancer Society estimates that around 20,000 AML cases will be diagnosed in 2022.
Naturally, Steele is ready to fight it head-on and started treatment on February 3. Doctors say they caught the cancer early, 11 Alive reports.
Steele said in a statement to Newsweek: "If people can look at me and see how strong and confident I am and how my positivity exudes through me then they most definitely can do it too.
"We don't always get to choose the circumstances that happen to us... but we do get to choose what comes next!"
There are a number of different ways AML can be treated, including chemotherapy, radiation therapy, chemotherapy with stem cell transplant, targeted therapy, and other drug therapy, according to the National Cancer Institute. Patients may also take part in clinical trials of other treatments.
Earlier this month, Kimberly Young, a nurse at the inpatient rehabilitation center and a friend of Steele's, launched a fundraiser to help Steele as much as possible.
"She has suited up for battle and [is] ready to try and conquer this next phase of her life," Young wrote in the fundraiser description. "The dawn after the darkness is coming and she will be there to meet it when it does."
The fundraiser, set up on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe, had gained a little over $750 of its $75,000 goal as of Thursday morning. It is titled "Help Kim Steele Beat Acute Myeloid Leukemia".
Other recent fundraisers include one in support of a man who was paralyzed from the neck down after being hit by a wave and one in memory of a teenager who passed away.
