But desperation changes the rules.

Three months ago, my life was a high-wire act, and the safety net had just snapped. My mother, Julia, was dying. Stage IV breast cancer, metastasized to her lymph nodes and liver. The doctors at Mount Sinai gave her a year, maybe less. She had spent twenty-four years—my entire life—scrubbing floors in Manhattan penthouses to keep a roof over our heads in Brooklyn. Now, she was fighting a war she couldn’t afford. The co-pays were crushing us. The chemotherapy was a thief that stole her hair, her energy, and every cent we had.