HALLSVILLE, Texas — An East Texas mother of nine children is battling stage 4 cancer.
“I’m still here, so I feel like I’ll make it through this,” Hallsville mother Krystal Adams said.
Sitting in her kitchen, she remains uncertain about what her future holds as she was diagnosed with stage 4 head and neck cancer in August.
“I was in disbelief,” she said.
The timing of this diagnosis comes as the single mother of nine has already faced many life challenges.
"I just lost my baby two years ago. We just had three babies at one time. I just graduated school. I got this new position at work, and I got cancer, stage four,” Adams said.
The cancer started in her tongue and near her throat and she said basic human functions like eating have become a struggle.
“I like to eat,” Adams said. “I'm a big eater. My whole family likes to eat, and I can't eat anything but soft foods, like a baby basically.”
Occasionally, she can put down rice and small pieces of chicken but even that has become a luxury.
Aside from eating, Adams said conversations have also become a struggle.
She's also taken a financial hit. She just finished school to become a certified nurse but doctors recommended she doesn’t work throughout her treatment.
“I don’t have an income right now to take care of my kids,” Adams said. “I worked every day and never missed. Now I don't have a job. I have a job, but I can't go to it.”
Adams and her doctors are moving forward with the decision to go through aggressive chemotherapy once a week and radiation five days a week.
“I'll be doing treatment for like seven weeks,” Adams said. “The doctor says it's hopefully curable, but if it comes back it could spread to my lungs and be terminal. So I'm praying that it does not come back.”
Despite her odds and the challenges she faces with pain, eating and talking, her biggest fear is her nine children losing their mother.
“The biggest thing is, what if something happens to me with my nine kids, and mentally trying to accept like, 'why? Why did this happen to me?' But I know God has something bigger,” Adams said.
Community members have set up a GoFundMe page so Adams can pay for medical expenses and support her children in this time.