In Loving Memory…

LenNyika S. C. Gray January 5, 1980 – May 8, 2009

The idea for Truth Foundation was inspired on December 24, 2008 when doctors informed Bernard Laverne and LenNyika, his wife of three years, that she would not survive advanced stage 3b of cervical cancer that had invaded her body.

LenNyika was 27 years young when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. At the time she worked for a national transportation company based in Southern California as an Assistant Operations Manager. On her job, she was openly praised by senior officers as the future CEO of her company. A positive light, she impacted the lives of all those she came in contact with. Whether by lending a helping hand when needed, lending an open ear, or a shoulder to lean on–everybody loved “Nyika”, as she was called by family and close friends.

Prior to Bernard and Nyika marrying, she went to her doctor for her annual routine pap smear where she was told  later by her doctor that the results of her pap smear came back “slightly abnormal.” She returned for a follow-up visit and her doctor reassured her there was nothing to panic about and that she should simply come back in one year for her annual appointment.

A couple of months later Nyika began experiencing slightly irregular periods. Her period durations were either shorter or longer than usual, and her menstrual flow was heavier than normal coupled with severe menstrual cramps.

After months of irregular periods and being told by her doctors that it was attributed to stress and not to worry, Nyika began to bleed nonstop while her body consistently passed blood clots–some as large as her hand. She was always in terrible pain and was told by her doctors that it was her hormones or possibly fibroids, so they prescribed birth control pills in an effort to stop the bleeding hormonally. The birth control pills didn’t work and the bleeding continued, eventually leading to Nyika needing 3 blood transfusions.  After all of this, they decided to perform a biopsy of her cervix where her doctors found that she had advanced cervical cancer and that the birth control pills they prescribe having progesterone, the chemical in birth control that causes the body to think its pregnant–also a form of estrogen, was actually feeding the cancer and caused it to grow rapidly. That was in June of 2008, it was an uphill battle from there. Nyika went through chemotherapy, external and internal radiation, but the cancer moved to her lymph nodes and eventually into her bloodstream causing a total of 15 tumors to grow on both livers and 4 tumors to grow in her spine.

Throughout Nyika and Bernard’s battle with the disease there was also a constant uphill battle establishing a clear line of communication with the physician’s overseeing his Nyika’s care. Bernard saw the importance of aggressively advocating on his wife’s behalf and began studying the prescribed medications and combative treatments. Through his independent advocacy on behalf of his wife, he started speaking with the directors of each department servicing his wife and the director of the hospital eventually bringing all of her doctors together as a collective to work with him and his wife as opposed to working on his wife. Bernard insisted on exercising his wife’s right to be directly involved in her care to ensure she was receiving the best medical treatment available, verses what was cost effective for the hospital and the standard offering for Nyika’s type of medical insurance.

Bernard and his wife knew of 3 couples on the same floor battling with the same disease going through the same bureaucratic red tape and saw the need for a service to provide advocacy for patients and their families who were in the same predicament, thereby planting the seed that would later form The Truth Foundation.