(LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic homeschooling mother of five suffering from stage four breast cancer is struggling to fund a cancer treatment with a relatively high success rate but which is not covered by insurance.
Ann Widrig Konieczny, the mother of children ages 6, 8, and 10, was diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2022. Despite initial treatment, the cancer recurred locally and has recently spread to her sternum. Now, she is resorting to a loan to cover the cost of an alternative treatment at CNM Hospital in San Luis, Mexico, that aims to destroy cancer cells while restoring the immune system. The treatment offers a 60% to 80% success rate depending on the type and severity of cancer.
Help Ann Fight Stage IV Breast Cancer
Another woman who had severely advanced stage 4 breast cancer and was “also written off by U.S. doctors,” according to Ann’s friend Amy Mushinski, received alternative treatments at CMN Hospital and was declared free of cancer eight months later. She remains cancer free 14 years later.
Ann and her husband have taken care to live a healthy lifestyle, growing much of their own produce on their farm in upstate New York and avoiding toxins in their home. However, Ann believes that emotional and spiritual stressors underlie her cancer. She has suffered the grief of a miscarriage and other hardships within her family, and like many mothers, has struggled with setting the boundaries necessary to care for herself.
Ann also believes an underdeveloped spiritual life and an attitude of self-reliance rather than dependence on God have played a role in her illness, since the mind and soul “are deeply intertwined,” as she shared in a reflection she co-wrote with Mushinski.
The reflection, shared with LifeSiteNews, shares thoughts on Ann’s cancer diagnosis, what led to it, and how it has prompted Ann to seek to grow and heal, not just physically but as a whole person.
“She’s come to a deeper understanding that God allows sufferings to draw us and other souls closer to Him by purifying the disorder in our hearts and in our lives. She has come to realize her need for a deeper & more personal relationship with Christ,” Mushinski wrote of Ann.
Ann views her diagnosis as a call to heal spiritually as well as emotionally, especially after attending a healing retreat with a priest who is a member of the Oblates of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM). He spoke at length about “the need to heal our hearts to draw closer to God and the role that past traumas and unmet spiritual and emotional needs play in the woundedness of our souls,” according to Mushinski, and stressed that traumas are stored in our bodies as well as our minds, as explained in the Van-der-Kolk title, “The Body Keeps the Score.”
Ann suggested that a closer relationship with God and an attitude of dependence on Him is not only inherently important and valuable but can help buffer against the stressors that can contribute to chronic conditions such as cancer.
“If God allows her more time on this earth, she wants to help other women going through this diagnosis. For her, it’s not just an opportunity to offer up sufferings for herself and others, but an opportunity to acknowledge and correct the disorders in her soul,” Mushinski wrote.
Ann also pointed out that not only is it easy as a mother to neglect the time one needs to be nourished “spiritually and emotionally” but that “the enemy can trick us into seeing our vocations at times as more of a burden then an opportunity to be a self-gift to our husbands and children.”
St. Charbel and Mother Therese of Jesus, foundress of the first Ancient Order Carmelite monastery in North America, both had a “dramatic” effect on Ann’s spiritual journey. Shortly after her cancer diagnosis, Ann received a relic of St. Charbel, who is sometimes called the “Padre Pio of the East,” and has interceded to perform more than 30,000 documented medical miracles.
Ann also desires to spread devotion to Mother Therese of Jesus, whose body was found intact 63 years after her burial in 1939, and is remembered for a great devotion to the Holy Eucharist, as well as for her founding role in the first Ancient Order Carmelite monastery in the U.S.
Ann and her family have attended the Latin Mass for years, and currently attend the Divine Liturgy at a local Ukrainian Catholic Church.
Even the smallest donations for Ann’s cancer treatment will help, and she is also asking for prayers at this time. To send donations through the mail, please email [email protected] for more information.