Web pages rally support as family deals with dad's cancer, death
Saturday, January 16, 2010 2:59 AM
By Kathy Lynn Gray
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Midwife Amy Wakeling feels Amber Marinello's baby move during a visit. Wakeling set up the Web page seeking help for the family. That help has included everything from respite for Marinello so she can sleep, to food, diapers, child care and snow shoveling.
SHARI LEWIS | Dispatch
Amber Marinello and John Cabrera are parents of Marco, 4, and Hugo, 1. Another boy is on the way, due next month.
New Age Foto (NewAgeFoto made the front page of the Dispatch)Groceries arrived via the midwife's husband.
Lunch showed up with a friend from work.
Size 4 diapers were on the way.
Amber Marinello was having the best -- and worst -- days of her life as she shuttled from the living room of her East Side bungalow to the makeshift hospital she'd created in the dining room a few steps away.
In the living room, she recorded, hour by hour, the pills her husband, John Cabrera, took because of the cancer that was killing him. And yesterday, the cancer won.
It was less than three weeks after he learned that the tumors doctors had removed in October had returned, but not before he also learned that a community brought together by the Internet had geared up to help his pregnant wife and two preschoolers.
In early January, doctors sent him home for hospice care.
Since then, a growing network of helpers has taken over, linked by a Facebook page detailing the family's plight.
"It's so bittersweet, but it's so beautiful," said Marinello on Thursday as she talked about the friends, relatives and strangers who had cleaned her house, shoveled her walk, dropped off dinner, watched her children and stayed overnight to care for Cabrera so she could sleep.
The couple's third son is due around Valentine's Day.
Midwife Amy Wakeling set up the Web page to let people know how they could help the couple. First, friends and family volunteered. Then friends of friends. Then friends of friends of friends.
Wakeling's plea for support has been passed along via e-mail and Facebook. As of yesterday, more than 450 people had become "fans" of the Facebook page, and 49 people had donated cash through a payment page.
Volunteers have signed up to help the family at their home every day in January. Wakeling set up an online calendar.
"Everyone was calling and e-mailing me, and I couldn't keep track," she said. "Now I tell them to get onto the calendar and figure out when they're needed."
Another friend, Meredith Feisel, is putting together a benefit that she and Wakeling hope will bring in enough money to keep Marinello and the children afloat.
Cabrera, 51, ran a concession business when he was well, but the income didn't leave the couple much savings. Diabetes and a heart problem made life insurance costly, so he had none.
Marinello, 24, sells Mary Kay cosmetics when she can.
"John and I were happy, very happy," Marinello said. After living together for four years, they got married late last summer. A few weeks later came the cancer diagnosis.
Wakeling said she and others started helping in small ways, and that the movement grew from there.
Donations arrive daily in the mail, some from strangers. All sorts of people have signed up to help. A doctor at the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital, where Cabrera was treated, has volunteered to clean the couple's house.
Northstar Cafe, Marinello's favorite restaurant, has been sending her free lunch daily.
Even with help from her own family and her husband's relatives, Marinello and her sons, Marco, 4, and Hugo, 1, face an uncertain future. She will get some income from the sale of Cabrera's business, but without a high-school diploma, her job prospects are dim.
Still, Feisel said that as awful as the situation is, people's willingness to help has been inspiring.
"I keep thinking that if anything happened to my husband or me, it makes me feel good to think that someone might help us like this."
To see the Facebook page for Amber Marinello and John Cabrera, go to http://tinyurl.com/ydhydy8.
kgray@dispatch.com
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