GoFundMe Appeal For Family Of East Haven Dad With Terminal Cancer

EAST HAVEN, CT - A GoFundMe has been created to help a local family as the father now faces a terminal cancer diagnosis.

According to the appeal’s creator Erika Santino-Santiago, Joey Benson of East Haven has been battling stage four colon cancer for around three years. Husband of Amber Benson and father of Joseph Melillo Middle School student Trinity, Benson’s condition worsened, Santino-Santiago wrote.

“He recently went into kidney failure and doctors were only able to save his left kidney,” Santino-Santiago wrote on GoFundMe. She said that last week, Benson had to have an emergency colostomy. She said that the “out-of-pocket” costs for medical supplies for his “care to date and for future care are astronomical.”

She also noted on GoFundMe that Benson had been working for as long as he could “while battling this vicious disease.” Until the past few months when his condition worsened and is now no longer able to work, she said. So his wife has taken on a second job to help support the family, according to Santino-Santiago.

“Amber, being the amazing wife and mother she is, has taken on a second full-time night job to try and help make ends meet,” she wrote. “But as a community we can do better for their family.”

The couple’s youngest child Trinity, who has been at home as a virtual learner, has been “by her dad’s side this year,” Santino-Santiago noted.

Santino-Santiago hopes the GoFundMe will allow for Amber Benson to “be able to spend these precious moments with her family also.”

For those who wish to donate, click here.

GoFundMe is a Patch partner.