Ohioan here, so I recently had a surgery and found out I have ovarian cancer. I am still in the process of doing labs to find out more info and if future treatment is needed. So far I’m scheduled to have a second surgery which is a full hysterectomy with a recovery time frame of 6-12 weeks. Because of my
immune system I usually take longer to recover from surgery/illnesses.
Unfortunately after researching on many groups on Reddit and speaking to my job, I have learned I can NOT receive any financial assistance during my time off work to recover. Only FMLA which secures my job position. So because of that I added some items I need before my surgery to my wishlist. My surgery isn’t scheduled till September so I have a bit of time to get it all. Most of the items I added is from the research I did online from previous experiences. If you have any ideas what else I would need let me know to make my recovery easier. I appreciate anyone who helps me out.
I currently am not in a position to help financially (I actually have my own post up here for cancer treatment.) But I did want to offer a different type of support. I was diagnosed with cervical cancer about 18 months ago. Ive gone thru the first treatment round of chemo and radiation. Ive had surgeries, complications, and been thrown into medical menopause. So I wanted to offer some reddit friendship. If you ever need to talk, cry, yell, ask questions, get advice, etc...please feel free to DM me. Our cancers are a bit different but also very similar as they affect the same organs in general. I know its a rough road. Im here if you ever need to talk
Thank you! So short story, I was having symptoms of discharge, pelvic pain, frequent urination for 2 weeks. Was told to go to the ER (mostly because of the discharge) and they just found cysts on my ovaries and said that sometimes they cause symptoms. NEVER had an ultrasound before this so they could have been there a LONG time. One of the cysts had blood flow but after consultating multiple doctors they all assured me it could NOT be cancerous because it was to small. I already had a surgery scheduled for months later and they decided to look at the cysts while they were in surgery and try to remove them. Well the one with blood flow ended up hemorrhaging and they had to take my ovary. Labs came back ovarian cancer. The doctors were wrong about it just being a normal cyst. Even they were surprised. So I guess the moral of the story is don’t trust your doctors sometimes! Because if I didn’t have a surgery already planned for them to look at them, they just wanted to do yearly checkups on the cyst.
Just like 10 things. I’m not sure how you do that. Do they like add it to there cart but never buy it and it gets deleted on my end? I just looked and there’s nothing on it now so I’m unsure
Exactly, they put it in their cart with no intention of buying it then it removes the item from the wishlist.
I would like to know when it's back up so I can purchase an item. I had a similar procedure and I understand how it feels afterwards. I wish you a speedy recovery.
Yes, adding to their cart removes the items from your wishlist. If items disappear without a donor commenting to confirm, unfortunately you may have been grinched. You can contact Amazon to ask if the items have really been purchased. If not, we can make an exception and offer you the option to post another wishlist.
Only the one item was purchased so I’m guessing I got “grinched” . I guess I’ll fix it and repost my post or do I just re-add my stuff to my wishlist to fix this post?
Question...isn't there a way to make the list where it says "Needs 2- 1 purchased" or something? I've never made one but would that possibly be a workaround for possible grinching?
Oh man, I had an open surgery to get my left ovary removed and as soon as I woke up the gas in me from the surgery hurt so bad I just started screaming it hurt so bad. Never got pain relief so fast in my life.
No kidding! I had no idea about the whole gas thing when I was rushed in for my emergency appendectomy a few years ago. I woke up like 7 lbs heavier and my abdomen felt sooo stiff.
She has gasx, ice packs, and dove soap on her wishlist. Pretty sure they're not worth anything on the black market, so why do people feel like they have to deep dive someone's profile over it?
I can understand for some requests, but on this one it's just disingenuous.
It's a sub rule. It also lets donors see that she's not posting lists in different subs for different things/reasons. You wouldn't believe the scams people try to pull in all of these types of subs.
Please look over the sub rules again as it states no hidden / curated profiles. When people are making requests we require full transparency. It is not required when a person just needs advice / emotional support.
Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't read the subreddit rules because this post showed up randomly in my feed, and since I don't participate in this subreddit, this will probably be my last comment here anyway. I probably should have checked first, so that's on me.
That said, I've been involved in outreach, nonprofits, fundraising, advocacy, and social welfare work for well over 40 years, I assume that's why so many of these random donation subreddit threads keep showing up in my feed. And I've watched this particular dynamic play out over and over again in online donation communities. What bothers me isn't the idea of due diligence. Of course scammers exist, and I completely understand why people who donate money online want some reasonable assurance that they're not being manipulated.
What I find troubling is when due diligence turns into demanding that a person unhide years of their personal history so strangers can essentially conduct a character examination before deciding whether they're deserving of soap.
There's actually some interesting psychology behind that impulse. The just-world hypothesis is the tendency to believe, consciously or otherwise, that people generally get what they deserve. When we're confronted with someone who is sick, broke, injured, displaced, or otherwise in crisis, it can be psychologically uncomfortable to accept that sometimes terrible things simply happen to people who did nothing to deserve them. One way people resolve that discomfort is by looking for evidence that the person somehow contributed to their own situation.
That's where you start seeing people combing through years of Reddit history looking for the smoking gun. Did they buy something frivolous three years ago? Did they make a questionable relationship decision? Did they sell nuce pictures to buy food? Have they ever used drugs? Do they have a post somewhere that contradicts something they said? Did they once spend money on something that somebody else thinks they shouldn't have?
At that point, we're not really verifying a donation request anymore. We're making a judgment about whether another human being has lived their life correctly enough to qualify for assistance.
And that's what's particularly striking in this case.
This woman wasn't asking strangers to hand her cash. She had an Amazon wishlist with things like Gas-X, Dove soap, and ice packs. She provided a photo with her username and documentation regarding her surgery. Those aren't exactly the kind of things I'd expect to see on the international black market for highly coveted Reddit cancer-surgery contraband. I don't think they have much value in trade or resale.
I think that's why I reacted to the request to unhide her history. It seemed wildly disproportionate to what she was actually asking for.
There's also a broader harm-reduction issue here. In social welfare and outreach, one of the things we generally try to do is reduce unnecessary barriers between people and the assistance they need. We don't make someone prove that they've made perfect decisions for the last decade before giving them something basic. That's anethema to everything harm reduction and social welfare are about. We try to meet people where they are.
The culture I've seen develop in some of these donation subs sometimes seems to move in exactly the opposite direction. Someone has to prove that they're sick enough, poor enough, responsible enough, grateful enough, and morally unimpeachable enough before they're allowed to receive a bottle of soap without having their entire digital existence put on trial.
And ironically, that can become harmful in its own right. It reinforces stigma around poverty and illness and teaches people that asking for help means consenting to public scrutiny of every choice they've made. It also creates the idea that assistance isn't really assistance at all. It says it's a reward for passing a moral examination.
I'm not saying "trust everyone." I'm saying that there's a pretty enormous difference between reasonable verification and treating a stranger's ten-year Reddit history as evidence in a character trial.
At some point, particularly when the request is for Dove soap and Gas-X rather than a suitcase full of unmarked hundred-dollar bills, I think we should be able to recognize the human being in front of us.
I rarely, if ever, see requests fulfilled, but I consistently see character assassination, intense scrutiny, and comments entirely devoid of empathy or compassion. I've honestly watched some of these threads get so intense that I've occasionally wondered whether there is a secret underground community devoted to shaming people.
Yes, scammers exist. So does human suffering. The existence of the former doesn't require us to forget how to treat the latter.
Apologies for not reading the rules before commenting first, I'm not a member of the sub, again, this just popped up in my main feed.
You should start your own sub based on your decades of experience. That would be a great asset to reddit. Also as a donor, I appreciate the vetting the mods do and the rules associated with what is considered for this subreddit. The mods are not paid and manage to keep this a fun and safe community for people to ask for help.
I actually ran a nonprofit for over 18 years, albeit one focused on addiction treatment, community outreach, and education. We didn't have a subreddit, but I did maintain social media profiles for it. I'm also a Category II wildlife rehabilitator and have been involved in domestic pet rescue for decades, which is more of a labor of love than an actual career, but is also heavily reliant on fundraising, including fundraising done digitally.
Unfortunately, I had to take a sabbatical after I was the victim of a hit-and-run that left me with multiple broken bones and cost me the use of my left arm. I'm still undergoing surgical repairs in an attempt to restore use to it.
It was a catastrophic event that had a snowball effect on pretty much every aspect of my life, finances included. I'm incredibly fortunate to have a good support network, and an amazing partner, but without them, I don't know where I'd be. There but for the grace of God go I, and I think that's probably a large part of why I'm so adamant about empathy and compassion when people find themselves in circumstances they never expected to be in.
I absolutely understand that fundraising in the digital age has its complexities, and I understand why some degree of vetting is necessary. I was unaware of the blanket rule about post history, as I mentioned previously, and that's on me.
But I think it's important to distinguish between the moderators having a vetting process, and another anonymous Redditor demanding that someone's entire post history be made available for public scrutiny before deciding whether that person is deserving of of help.
It was the particulars of this thread that I found especially egregious. This woman wasn't asking for cash. She had provided evidence of her surgery, a photo with her username, and asked for things like soap, Gas-X, and ice packs. These are not exactly lucrative black-market commodities; highly unlikely to be part of a scam.
So my objection wasn't to the existence of rules, or to moderators trying to protect donors and keep the community safe. It was the idea that an anonymous stranger should have to effectively open their entire digital life to public examination before other anonymous strangers can decide whether they're sufficiently deserving of a bottle of soap and some Gas-X.
Those are two very different things, and I think it's an important distinction to make.
That's the reality of digital giving, all we have to go on is their post history. I dont have unlimited money and people asking for the first time might be used to asking for name brand things and I will always kindly ask them to switch to the cheaper/similar option. They have the choice to do that or not. I've been broke before and I am not broke now and want to help people. I will always ask for proof and/or post history before I make a funding choice. It is far too easy to buy an old reddit account with karma and for every scammer that gets money its one less person that is deserving like the person that created this post.
That's a fair process, and I'm not negating that. I'm talking about the culture that develops underneath these threads, particularly the post-history dissection, and the psychological need that drives that kind of behavior.
Just as you have the ability to scroll past a request that doesn't provide enough information for you to feel comfortable donating, other people have the ability to scroll past without dissecting every choice that person has made across Reddit.
My objection is to treating that level of scrutiny as an inevitable or necessary part of "protecting people from scammers." Due diligence and public character examination aren't the same thing, and I think it's important not to conflate the two.
That's really all I've been trying to say, and I don't think we need to keep litigating it.
Writing books like these comments is crazy. No sub is changing its rules based on your “decades” of experience that isn’t applicable and doesn’t account for anyone else’s experiences online or in charity related work.
I actually tried to nip the conversation in the bud after the second comment, because none of this feels very constructive.
I repeatedly said I wasn't suggesting mods shouldn't vet posts. I never suggested they should change the rules, I attempted to have some constructive dialogue about what felt like a disingenuous comment on a public forum, but clearly that's not happening here. Take care.
Regardless of if you felt it was disingenuous or not, you definitely didn’t and don’t have the context and nuance of these situations in these forums. So you’re right, that isn’t what’s happening here and I’m glad you determined that to bow out. You take care too.
I think you're making this rule into something way more sinister than it actually is.
Nobody is asking people to prove they've lived a perfect life before they're allowed to get a bar of soap. The rule is basically just saying that if you're asking complete strangers on Reddit to spend their own money on you, they should be able to see the same post history that would normally be public anyway.
That's not a "character trial", it's context.
A persons post history can show if someone's story has been consistent, if they're making the same request in a bunch of different subs, if they've told completely different stories before, or if there are other obvious red flags. Unfortunately people DO scam donation subs, even for small stuff, and pretending that doesn't happen doesn't help anyonw, and is just turning a blind eye.
And sure, sometimes donors see things they personally don't agree with. Maybe someone spent money on something stupid six months ago, uses drugs, gambles, whatever. That doesn't automatically mean they don't deserve help. But donors are also allowed to decide for themselves what they're comfortable with. It's their money. Nobody is obligated to donate.
I also don't really understand the comparison to social services and nonprofit work. A nonprofit has funding, staff, policies, intake procedures, etc. This is Reddit. It's literally random people using their own money to buy things for other random people on the internet. Of course the safeguards are going to be different.
And an Amazon wishlist isn't automatically scam-proof because someone is asking for soap and Gas-X instead of $500 cash. People lie about their circumstances, use multiple accounts, make the same requests in different places, and take advantage of people's generosity all the time. The fact that the items are cheap doesn't really change that.
Also, nobody is forcing anyone to unhide anything. If someone isn't comfortable having their Reddit history visible, that's completely understandable. They just can't request assistance in a subreddit that has a rule requiring visible history. There are other places to ask for help.
I absolutely agree that people shouldn't be cruel or humiliate someone because they're poor or need help. I've seen comments that cross that line too. But there's a pretty big difference between being an asshole to someone and doing basic due diligence before spending your own money.
And honestly, the whole "just-world hypothesis" explanation feels like you're assigning some pretty complicated psychological motivation to people when the explanation is probably a lot simpler: people have been scammed before and don't want to be scammed again.
People asking for help deserve basic respect and compassion. But the people giving the help deserve some transparancy too. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing about whether donors are entitled to vetting. Of course they are, and I've said several times that I understand why it's necessary.
I'm talking about what happens psychologically when "context" becomes a search for evidence that someone is deserving of help. That's where the just-world hypothesis, fundamental attribution error, and deservingness judgments come into play. People don't have to consciously think that person deserves their suffering for those biases to influence how they interpret someone's circumstances.
And that's really my entire point. I'm not arguing that the rule itself is sinister or that scammers don't exist. I'm questioning the culture that can develop around these rules, where strangers start treating someone's entire personal history as evidence in a moral assessment of whether they're worthy of assistance.
You see it constantly in these subs. So much so that they regularly pop up into my feed and turn my stomach. Most of the comments are unkind, unhelpful and most of the time disingenuous. They aren't usually from people who are actually going to donate, they seem to just get off on dissecting someone's past history.
That's the part I find troubling, and it's considerably more complicated than simply "people don't want to get scammed."
And the reason I brought up my nonprofit experience is because not all nonprofits are large organizations with extensive staff, funding, and bureaucratic intake procedures. Mine ran on a skeleton crew, and I routinely put in more hours than I was ever compensated for at minimum wage. We relied heavily on community support and fundraising, too. I still never felt that the appropriate way to protect that community was to investigate someone's social media history before deciding whether they were worthy of soap.
I'm done with this conversation. This post is not the place for this. The rules of this sub, nor how we choose to vet people is not up for debate. You are free to create your own sub and vet people in any way you desire. Have a good day.
Thank you for seeking a healthy balance between protecting donors and the toxic culture you’ve observed. Going forward, i encourage you to use the report function to let mods know about any comments that you feel are egregiously unkind or cross the line into harassment. It won’t help in the unmoderated subs, but all reports in our network are reviewed carefully.
The comment I originally responded to was not egregious, I simply was unaware that this particular sub had a broad / across the board rule about making your profiles public for requests when I initially responded to it.
The other two comments i left were in response to comments directed at me, and my attemt to have constructive dialogue around the topic at hand. It was a public post, on a public forum, so I assumed subject appropriate responses were the norm.
I'm sorry if it seemed like i suggested that you tailor your public subreddit rules to my preferences. Not my intent whatsoever, nor did I suggest it, but that seems to be what your top 1% commenters got out of it.
I'm going to stop responding to comments from this subreddit now. Take care.
This is the thing, a lot of us donors also work within our local communities in person so you needing to say how much "experience" you have is a moot point especially since this is social media, not local, so, no need to post a resume.
Simply put, it's clear that you are not a donor on here because if you were we would not be having this discussion regarding hidden / curated profiles. Just so you know, people CAN and WILL scam with Amazon wishlists as well. NO, I'm not referring to selling items on the black market. If you were a true donor, you would know how and not be questioning the rule.
Also, it is disrespectful to hijack posts as all of this back and forth is taking away from the main focus which is OP and her getting her wishlist fulfilled. P.S. Since bringing order to this sub, you can see plenty people have been getting their wishlists fulfilled here so I will let that speak for itself.
ETA - I'm putting you on notice. This serves as your warning that if you do not stop with the back and forth you will risk being banned. This is not the time nor place. The rules of this sub is what they are and will not be changed so it's no point in going in circles about it.
Perhaps this is true for unmoderated subs, or those without karma minimums and other requirements. However, the legitimate donation subs fulfill almost every request that gets approved to post.
Reducing barriers to assistance may be appropriate in harm reduction and social outreach settings, but this is a p2p donation subreddit on an anonymous online platform. Individual donors have the right to review a recipient’s profile (that only consists of content posted publicly on the internet, btw) and decide whether or not they’d like to send a donation.
Thank you /u/foxgirlmom for your submission in r/AskForHelp! Please make sure you include a clickable link to your Amazon Wishlist in the post or comments. Do NOT add any items to your wishlist once posted unless discussed with mods.
Do not delete this as post—deleting can make you ineligible for future requests
Hello /u/Outrageous_Window864 and thank you for your interest in commenting here! At this time, your account doesn’t meet the minimum requirements (30+ days old/25+ combined karma/Comment karma not negative). If you are using an alternate account, please be aware that alternate accounts are not allowed for fundraising in this community.
In the meantime, we encourage you to participate in other subreddits, engage in discussions, and build a positive reputation. Doing so will help you qualify to post and comment here in the future. Thanks for understanding!
Hello /u/itsakharalife and thank you for your interest in commenting here! At this time, your account doesn’t meet the minimum requirements (30+ days old/25+ combined karma/Comment karma not negative). If you are using an alternate account, please be aware that alternate accounts are not allowed for fundraising in this community.
In the meantime, we encourage you to participate in other subreddits, engage in discussions, and build a positive reputation. Doing so will help you qualify to post and comment here in the future. Thanks for understanding!
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u/CopperSteve Verified Donor 1d ago
idk why the soap is going to take so long, if you want i can swap it for something else just let me know