For New York City teacher Kristen McRedmond, social media wasn’t just a way to distract herself from cancer treatment — it may have saved her life.
McRedmond, who works at Avenues, the elite Chelsea private school, was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer in 2012.
“I was under the impression I had one tumor, and that was it,” McRedmond, a 37-year-old Meatpacking District resident, tells The Post. “They wound up finding spots all over.”
She spent four years in and out of remission before things got worse in August.
“I got out of bed and fell to my side — my toes were numb, and fluid wasn’t moving through my body. My legs were five times their normal size,” she says. At that point, she’d exhausted her treatment options — chemo was no longer effective; her cancer didn’t respond to the drugs she tried.
Her only hope was to get her hands on an IV medication being tested at some hospitals on breast-cancer patients that her doctors hoped could treat her rare type of cancer.
The only problem: Her insurance wouldn’t cover the treatment, and getting on a clinical trial would take more time than she had.
She estimates the medication itself would cost $50,000; any scans, bloodwork and additional treatment required would be extra.
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