Help Renee Rogowski Kuduk Fight Cancer

Who is she?

Renee is a wonderful wife to Rich and a fantastic mom to Rachel and Ricky.  She is tremendously loved by her sister Carolyn, her Mom Barbara, and her dad in Colorado, Steve.  She is loved by many other family and friends. 
She is a charge nurse at Palos Hospital, and loves her job.  She loves to go camping and spending time with her family.

Renee has had type-1 insulin-dependent diabetes since she was 2 years old.



What Happened?

Renee started feeling ill in 2018, with some GI pain and nausea.

In July of 2018, a colonoscopy and an EGD revealed no major issues.  An abdominal CT scan revealed no issues either.

Her symptoms persisted. 

In September 2018, she went to the ER again where they did another CT scan of the abdomen, which showed a nodule in her pancreas. 
A decision was made at that time, to biopsy the nodule.  The pathology results from the biopsy showed the tumor was a low-grade neuroendocrine tumor. 
Following this news, the decision was made to have the tumor removed.  The tumor was in the tail of the pancreas, and both the tumor and spleen were removed in early November. 
During the surgery, the surgeon found disease in the liver.  They removed two tumors from her liver and a part of her liver, leaving several inoperable tumors on the right side of her liver. 
The pathology report from the liver tissue was that it is an advanced, aggressive, large-cell poorly-differentiated neuroendocrine tumor, stage IV cancer.


What's going on now?

Renee is now fighting for her life, and while we don't know all of our treatment options just yet, here is what we do know so far:

1.  On December 4, she had a port installed for the chemo
2.  On December 5, she started her first round of chemo
3.  Her second round of chemo was December 26, 27, and 28.
4.  Her next round of chemo starts the week of January 13.
5.  She started seeing a specialist in this type of cancer, who is re-evaluating her case, and continuing aggressive chemo treatments.  She will be meeting with the specialist on January 25th.

Renee is also using holistic and natural energy healing modalities in addition to traditional medical treatments.  She is trying every possible thing she can.


Why Renee needs your support

Renee will continue working as much as she can.  She loves being a nurse, and loves her coworkers.  Due to the aggressive chemo treatments,  her hours will now be drastically reduced from full-time. 
She did return to work January 7, but the aggressive chemo makes her very tired.
Her chemo treatments are very expensive, as are her insulin, insulin pump supplies, test strips.  There is no foreseeable end to the chemo treatments every three weeks at this point.

Renee and Rich are raising two great kids, Rachel, a Junior in High School, and Ricky, attending College.

We are all hoping and praying for good news, her next appointment with the specialist is January 25.

I will keep you updated here, with any new developments.

Thank you!