Forever Remembered - The Beautiful Helen
Donation protected
Helen Lavidas - Forever in our hearts - August 7, 1974 - January 27th, 2019
Helen's journey was strong and encouraging. She taught us all to believe. She proved many doctors wrong and lived much longer than ever diagnosed. What drove Helen to live every single minute was her beautiful daughter Emily and loving husband Mike. Every breath, every moment, Helen persevered to spend as much time as possible with Mike and Emily. Helen is loved by so many. This account was originally started to raise funds for treatment. The response was overwhelming. Helen's heart grew by the love and support. Thank you, for your support and encouragement over the past few years. People have reached out wanting to know what they can do to help the family. Bringing this page back seemed like the right thing to do. Donations can be given through this page. The funds will help the family get back on their feet after this long journey. Helen you are missed!
Emily's Beautiful Facebook Post (click to view)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Past Post from 2017
Meet Helen! Cherished by her family. A young mother trying to find a way to have a normal life with her young family, looking forward to seeing her 9-year old daughter, Emily, grow up, graduate, marry and have children, and to becoming a loving grandmother.
It wasn’t long ago that all of this seemed possible. She and her husband, Mike, were snapping photos at every turn and showing off the love and pride of their lives, baby Emily. But at Emily’s 5th birthday party it was noticed that Helen’s bloodshot eye of a few weeks was still obviously and persistently red. She did not know how this came about. She carried on, not overly worried at first as everyone explained this can happen to many from time to time. Helen never let anything stand in her way of getting to the bottom of things, especially where it concerns her family’s health. She made an appointment to see her optometrist, who told her that it was nothing to worry about, it would soon go away. It didn’t and began to be a bigger concern; her vision was getting blurry.
Fast forward to another optometrist and then an ophthalmologist, who thought she might have a detached retina and immediately sent her to a specialist at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal to have it repaired. This doctor said he would love to be able to do that for her right away, but unfortunately, it was not only a detached retina but also a large mass growing in her eye. In total shock, Helen looked dazedly at her husband, Mike, and then back towards the doctor, and asked what he could do to correct it. He explained he couldn’t look after this and sent her to Ocular Oncologist, Dr. Callejo, at the Montreal General Hospital. This was becoming scarier by the moment and Helen had to try to keep it together for Emily.
The diagnosis was a large and very rare aggressive ocular melanoma, and Helen had very few and very difficult choices to make. The tumour was too large for them to operate on in Montreal, or anywhere else in Canada or the U.S. for that matter, and thus they recommended the removal of her eye. Another shocking and scary reality that Helen and her family had to absorb.
However, this very forward-thinking oncologist had another possible avenue. She knew of, and had in fact studied, under an eminent doctor in Liverpool, England: Professor Bertil Damato PhD, FRCOphth Honorary Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Liverpool and Director, Ocular Oncology Service, who was renowned for successfully pioneering a remarkable operation to remove very large eye tumours. But first she would have to get two local oncologists to agree to her candidacy for this procedure, in order to get Medicare’s approval for her to be able to travel to Liverpool for the operation. Without it, the medical costs would not only have drained them financially but left them with a large debt.
Thus began Helen’s necessary adventure. Medicare’s approval was given, arrangements were made quickly, and in July 2012, Professor Bertil Damato was awaiting Helen’s arrival at Saint Paul’s Eye Unit at The Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Liverpool, U.K., ready to perform the necessary surgery. Leaving Emily in the care of Mike’s parents in the country, a very brave Helen and her husband, Mike, set out for England. Thankfully, Helen’s parents went with them, to be at her side.
From the second they arrived at the University Hospital, she and Mike were treated “royally” and made very welcome. They were beyond thankful for Medicare’s approval and payment for this trip for both of them and for covering this procedure. Numerous tests were done and ‘The Professor’ kindly and carefully explained everything up front. Nonetheless brave Helen went into the operating room thinking that she might not ‘make it’! But Professor Damato’s groundbreaking and astonishing technique of cutting a trap-door in the eye and removing the tumour was deemed a resounding success!
In June 2015, Helen's follow-up liver scans revealed one lesion. Doctors were unsure how to proceed at this point and by July two more lesions had appeared. The following month another lesion showed up. There were now four. Towards the end of August 2015, Helen had a biopsy done to determine precisely if these were cancerous lesions. Her ultimate fears were brought to the fore. They were. In September 2015, a scan revealed one more lesion had appeared. There were now a total of five lesions.
Helen and Mike were advised that doctors do not like to operate to remove lesions because of the possibility even more could appear. A doctor at the Notre Dame Hospital in Montreal suggested full-systemic chemotherapy. But from all the research Helen had done on Ocular Melanoma, chemotherapy does not work on her type of cancer, with a success rate of only 5%.
In October 2015, Helen contacted Dr. Sato in Philadelphia (an expert in Ocular Melanoma Metastasis) who suggested SirSpheres, a radioembolization treatment which is liver directed, for which the cost is now covered for U.S. citizens. This treatment has a much higher success rate. Here in Canada a similar treatment, TheraSpheres, was found to be available in Vancouver, Edmonton and Montreal. But unfortunately only the procedure for administering TheraSpheres would be covered by Medicare, not the product itself. The $15,000 cost is beyond the reach of many Canadian families and can eat through a family’s life savings. But Helen and Mike, the single-income family breadwinner, felt they had no alternative but go forward.
On Oct 20th, 2015, they met with the TheraSpheres team in Montreal and on Oct 26th Helen had a radioembolization dry-run (to test if she was a good candidate for the Theraspheres). She was, and on November 9th she had the radioembolization procedure done at Montreal’s new superhospital.
The next scans were scheduled for December 22nd. A Christmas present? These scans would determine if the tumours were killed, reduced in size or unchanged. If they were reduced in size, a second round of TheraSpheres would be given. If there was no change, new avenues would have to be sought.
All of the hospital costs are covered by Medicare. Unfortunately, the TherasSpheres product are not covered, and each treatment costs $15,000 – up front.
JANUARY 2016
An uplifting note in the fight for Helen’s healing is that the scan results at Christmas showed necrosis (death of cells) for some of the lesions! Yay!! --- We will not give up! --- Helen went for a full scan on January 16th and was buoyed up by the results of the treatment.
On January 22nd, the team of specialists at the Montreal super hospital reviewed Helen’s full scan of January 16th and Helen met with her oncologist at the Montreal’s superhospital on January 26th to discuss the findings. --What started out as another worried morning became one of new hope. -- The scan findings confirmed that there was necrosis for some lesions and a reduction in size of others. Not a full celebration, but definitely noteworthy that something good was happening.
As Helen was still healing from the embolization treatment, it was decided to wait until early March so that even further healing could take place, and then have another scan. After review of the scan, the team would determine and schedule the next treatment.
MARCH 2016
On March 1st Helen had an MRI of her liver to determine if the lesions were finally dead from the Therespheres treatment. While awaiting the results to come in from the Montreal doctors, Helen immediately sent a copy of the MRI DVD to Dr. Sato in Philadelphia (expert on Metastatic Uveal Melanoma) for review. Because of the rarity of her disease a second opinion was very important in order to know how to proceed. Dr. Sato would be meeting with his team earlier than the team of doctors at the Montreal superhospital, and Helen would get their findings and suggested course of action before she met with the Montreal doctors. Helen received Dr. Sato’s written report within two days. Dr. Sato’s detailed medical report determined that the lesions on Helen’s liver were stable and that she should get rescanned in three months.
Finally, on March 15th, Helen met with the Montreal doctor to discuss the MRI findings and it was a defining day in Helen’s journey.
All of the lesions were shown to be dead– with no new lesions found! The Therespheres treatment was successful.
MARCH 4, 2017
After a year of stabilized liver lesions following the liver radioembolization, sadly, Helen's cancer has returned.
To give a little history of Helen's new diagnosis: Helen started to feel pain between her shoulder blade and spine about 3 months ago. Thinking that it may be a pinched nerve, she pushed through the days with the pain, thinking that pinched nerves take time to heal and it would eventually heal on its own. As time progressed, however, the pain intensified and her fingers started to feel numb and the strength in her hand rapidly decreased. This could no longer be ignored and finally Helen decided to go to the ER at Montreal’s superhospital to find the cause and have it treated. Knowing Helen’s history, the doctors immediately scheduled an MRI of her brachial plexus. The MRI showed there was a 3.2cm lesion growing near her spine with a tentacle into the bone just 2mm from her spinal cord. – After team consultation, the doctors suggested 3 treatments of robotic radiotherapy (Cyberknife) to the lesion. The pain subsided and Helen is hopeful that the next MRI will show that the radiotherapy was successful.
On February 6th, Helen's quarterly scans of her abdomen showed 8 new lesions on her liver and two on her right adrenal gland. --After discussion with her oncologists in Montreal, once more, nothing very promising was proposed for Helen's treatment, except a very toxic treatment called Pembro, which has a very little to no success rate for her type of cancer, and possibly a new trial in Toronto, for which she was given no details and no guarantee of success.
After much research into natural therapies, in which Helen is a firm believer, rather than chemo, which does not work for her cancer, she has decided to try immunotherapy in an effort to bring her immune system back to life and to give her body what it needs to fight the cancer naturally. Her extensive research brought to light a natural therapy hospital in Tijuana, Mexico, by the name of Chipsa Hospital, where treatments have had an 85% success rate in helping people heal from "terminal" cancers. Unfortunately, these treatments are not covered by insurance, Medicare or government entities, so, once again, Helen must try to raise funds to cover these extremely high costs on her own. The treatments and a three-week stay at the hospital will cost approx. $29,000 USD and a 3-month take-home treatment will cost an additional $7,000 USD.
Helen is in the fight for her life and she needs your financial help. (Any amount will do.) The costs for her treatments and supplements not covered have financially drained their one-income household. She and her family are currently in debt and are graciously asking for any help possible for these treatments to help save her life. Every dollar will help. With little Emily at home and Mike by her side, Helen has determined to do everything in her power to get back to health. She will try her very best by any and all means possible, even if other than conventional medicine, which hasn't been able to help her achieve this. She would like to live and be around for little Emily as she grows up.
The treatments that Helen will be receiving at Chipsa Hospital are the following: Laetrile (B17) (IV), High Dose of Vitamin C (IV), Vitamin K3 (IV), Coley's Therapy, IV Ozone Therapy, Chelation Therapy, Gerson Immunotherapy.
This is the biggest battle Helen has had to face in her life but she is dedicated. She is determined to beat this rare cancer and live a long and healthy life with her dear and supportive husband and her very loving and beautiful 9-year-old daughter. Emily. Life is worth living!
God bless you all and thank you for taking the time to read the story of Helen’s journey.
Please share this with your friends and know that donations of any amount will help in easing this very heavy financial burden in the fight for Helen’s life. -- No amount is too small and would be so appreciated.
Thank you. Thank you for your prayers, thank you for your donations and thank you for sharing on Facebook and twitter.
Love to all!
Helen's journey was strong and encouraging. She taught us all to believe. She proved many doctors wrong and lived much longer than ever diagnosed. What drove Helen to live every single minute was her beautiful daughter Emily and loving husband Mike. Every breath, every moment, Helen persevered to spend as much time as possible with Mike and Emily. Helen is loved by so many. This account was originally started to raise funds for treatment. The response was overwhelming. Helen's heart grew by the love and support. Thank you, for your support and encouragement over the past few years. People have reached out wanting to know what they can do to help the family. Bringing this page back seemed like the right thing to do. Donations can be given through this page. The funds will help the family get back on their feet after this long journey. Helen you are missed!
Emily's Beautiful Facebook Post (click to view)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Past Post from 2017
Meet Helen! Cherished by her family. A young mother trying to find a way to have a normal life with her young family, looking forward to seeing her 9-year old daughter, Emily, grow up, graduate, marry and have children, and to becoming a loving grandmother.
It wasn’t long ago that all of this seemed possible. She and her husband, Mike, were snapping photos at every turn and showing off the love and pride of their lives, baby Emily. But at Emily’s 5th birthday party it was noticed that Helen’s bloodshot eye of a few weeks was still obviously and persistently red. She did not know how this came about. She carried on, not overly worried at first as everyone explained this can happen to many from time to time. Helen never let anything stand in her way of getting to the bottom of things, especially where it concerns her family’s health. She made an appointment to see her optometrist, who told her that it was nothing to worry about, it would soon go away. It didn’t and began to be a bigger concern; her vision was getting blurry.
Fast forward to another optometrist and then an ophthalmologist, who thought she might have a detached retina and immediately sent her to a specialist at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal to have it repaired. This doctor said he would love to be able to do that for her right away, but unfortunately, it was not only a detached retina but also a large mass growing in her eye. In total shock, Helen looked dazedly at her husband, Mike, and then back towards the doctor, and asked what he could do to correct it. He explained he couldn’t look after this and sent her to Ocular Oncologist, Dr. Callejo, at the Montreal General Hospital. This was becoming scarier by the moment and Helen had to try to keep it together for Emily.
The diagnosis was a large and very rare aggressive ocular melanoma, and Helen had very few and very difficult choices to make. The tumour was too large for them to operate on in Montreal, or anywhere else in Canada or the U.S. for that matter, and thus they recommended the removal of her eye. Another shocking and scary reality that Helen and her family had to absorb.
However, this very forward-thinking oncologist had another possible avenue. She knew of, and had in fact studied, under an eminent doctor in Liverpool, England: Professor Bertil Damato PhD, FRCOphth Honorary Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Liverpool and Director, Ocular Oncology Service, who was renowned for successfully pioneering a remarkable operation to remove very large eye tumours. But first she would have to get two local oncologists to agree to her candidacy for this procedure, in order to get Medicare’s approval for her to be able to travel to Liverpool for the operation. Without it, the medical costs would not only have drained them financially but left them with a large debt.
Thus began Helen’s necessary adventure. Medicare’s approval was given, arrangements were made quickly, and in July 2012, Professor Bertil Damato was awaiting Helen’s arrival at Saint Paul’s Eye Unit at The Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Liverpool, U.K., ready to perform the necessary surgery. Leaving Emily in the care of Mike’s parents in the country, a very brave Helen and her husband, Mike, set out for England. Thankfully, Helen’s parents went with them, to be at her side.
From the second they arrived at the University Hospital, she and Mike were treated “royally” and made very welcome. They were beyond thankful for Medicare’s approval and payment for this trip for both of them and for covering this procedure. Numerous tests were done and ‘The Professor’ kindly and carefully explained everything up front. Nonetheless brave Helen went into the operating room thinking that she might not ‘make it’! But Professor Damato’s groundbreaking and astonishing technique of cutting a trap-door in the eye and removing the tumour was deemed a resounding success!
In June 2015, Helen's follow-up liver scans revealed one lesion. Doctors were unsure how to proceed at this point and by July two more lesions had appeared. The following month another lesion showed up. There were now four. Towards the end of August 2015, Helen had a biopsy done to determine precisely if these were cancerous lesions. Her ultimate fears were brought to the fore. They were. In September 2015, a scan revealed one more lesion had appeared. There were now a total of five lesions.
Helen and Mike were advised that doctors do not like to operate to remove lesions because of the possibility even more could appear. A doctor at the Notre Dame Hospital in Montreal suggested full-systemic chemotherapy. But from all the research Helen had done on Ocular Melanoma, chemotherapy does not work on her type of cancer, with a success rate of only 5%.
In October 2015, Helen contacted Dr. Sato in Philadelphia (an expert in Ocular Melanoma Metastasis) who suggested SirSpheres, a radioembolization treatment which is liver directed, for which the cost is now covered for U.S. citizens. This treatment has a much higher success rate. Here in Canada a similar treatment, TheraSpheres, was found to be available in Vancouver, Edmonton and Montreal. But unfortunately only the procedure for administering TheraSpheres would be covered by Medicare, not the product itself. The $15,000 cost is beyond the reach of many Canadian families and can eat through a family’s life savings. But Helen and Mike, the single-income family breadwinner, felt they had no alternative but go forward.
On Oct 20th, 2015, they met with the TheraSpheres team in Montreal and on Oct 26th Helen had a radioembolization dry-run (to test if she was a good candidate for the Theraspheres). She was, and on November 9th she had the radioembolization procedure done at Montreal’s new superhospital.
The next scans were scheduled for December 22nd. A Christmas present? These scans would determine if the tumours were killed, reduced in size or unchanged. If they were reduced in size, a second round of TheraSpheres would be given. If there was no change, new avenues would have to be sought.
All of the hospital costs are covered by Medicare. Unfortunately, the TherasSpheres product are not covered, and each treatment costs $15,000 – up front.
JANUARY 2016
An uplifting note in the fight for Helen’s healing is that the scan results at Christmas showed necrosis (death of cells) for some of the lesions! Yay!! --- We will not give up! --- Helen went for a full scan on January 16th and was buoyed up by the results of the treatment.
On January 22nd, the team of specialists at the Montreal super hospital reviewed Helen’s full scan of January 16th and Helen met with her oncologist at the Montreal’s superhospital on January 26th to discuss the findings. --What started out as another worried morning became one of new hope. -- The scan findings confirmed that there was necrosis for some lesions and a reduction in size of others. Not a full celebration, but definitely noteworthy that something good was happening.
As Helen was still healing from the embolization treatment, it was decided to wait until early March so that even further healing could take place, and then have another scan. After review of the scan, the team would determine and schedule the next treatment.
MARCH 2016
On March 1st Helen had an MRI of her liver to determine if the lesions were finally dead from the Therespheres treatment. While awaiting the results to come in from the Montreal doctors, Helen immediately sent a copy of the MRI DVD to Dr. Sato in Philadelphia (expert on Metastatic Uveal Melanoma) for review. Because of the rarity of her disease a second opinion was very important in order to know how to proceed. Dr. Sato would be meeting with his team earlier than the team of doctors at the Montreal superhospital, and Helen would get their findings and suggested course of action before she met with the Montreal doctors. Helen received Dr. Sato’s written report within two days. Dr. Sato’s detailed medical report determined that the lesions on Helen’s liver were stable and that she should get rescanned in three months.
Finally, on March 15th, Helen met with the Montreal doctor to discuss the MRI findings and it was a defining day in Helen’s journey.
All of the lesions were shown to be dead– with no new lesions found! The Therespheres treatment was successful.
MARCH 4, 2017
After a year of stabilized liver lesions following the liver radioembolization, sadly, Helen's cancer has returned.
To give a little history of Helen's new diagnosis: Helen started to feel pain between her shoulder blade and spine about 3 months ago. Thinking that it may be a pinched nerve, she pushed through the days with the pain, thinking that pinched nerves take time to heal and it would eventually heal on its own. As time progressed, however, the pain intensified and her fingers started to feel numb and the strength in her hand rapidly decreased. This could no longer be ignored and finally Helen decided to go to the ER at Montreal’s superhospital to find the cause and have it treated. Knowing Helen’s history, the doctors immediately scheduled an MRI of her brachial plexus. The MRI showed there was a 3.2cm lesion growing near her spine with a tentacle into the bone just 2mm from her spinal cord. – After team consultation, the doctors suggested 3 treatments of robotic radiotherapy (Cyberknife) to the lesion. The pain subsided and Helen is hopeful that the next MRI will show that the radiotherapy was successful.
On February 6th, Helen's quarterly scans of her abdomen showed 8 new lesions on her liver and two on her right adrenal gland. --After discussion with her oncologists in Montreal, once more, nothing very promising was proposed for Helen's treatment, except a very toxic treatment called Pembro, which has a very little to no success rate for her type of cancer, and possibly a new trial in Toronto, for which she was given no details and no guarantee of success.
After much research into natural therapies, in which Helen is a firm believer, rather than chemo, which does not work for her cancer, she has decided to try immunotherapy in an effort to bring her immune system back to life and to give her body what it needs to fight the cancer naturally. Her extensive research brought to light a natural therapy hospital in Tijuana, Mexico, by the name of Chipsa Hospital, where treatments have had an 85% success rate in helping people heal from "terminal" cancers. Unfortunately, these treatments are not covered by insurance, Medicare or government entities, so, once again, Helen must try to raise funds to cover these extremely high costs on her own. The treatments and a three-week stay at the hospital will cost approx. $29,000 USD and a 3-month take-home treatment will cost an additional $7,000 USD.
Helen is in the fight for her life and she needs your financial help. (Any amount will do.) The costs for her treatments and supplements not covered have financially drained their one-income household. She and her family are currently in debt and are graciously asking for any help possible for these treatments to help save her life. Every dollar will help. With little Emily at home and Mike by her side, Helen has determined to do everything in her power to get back to health. She will try her very best by any and all means possible, even if other than conventional medicine, which hasn't been able to help her achieve this. She would like to live and be around for little Emily as she grows up.
The treatments that Helen will be receiving at Chipsa Hospital are the following: Laetrile (B17) (IV), High Dose of Vitamin C (IV), Vitamin K3 (IV), Coley's Therapy, IV Ozone Therapy, Chelation Therapy, Gerson Immunotherapy.
This is the biggest battle Helen has had to face in her life but she is dedicated. She is determined to beat this rare cancer and live a long and healthy life with her dear and supportive husband and her very loving and beautiful 9-year-old daughter. Emily. Life is worth living!
God bless you all and thank you for taking the time to read the story of Helen’s journey.
Please share this with your friends and know that donations of any amount will help in easing this very heavy financial burden in the fight for Helen’s life. -- No amount is too small and would be so appreciated.
Thank you. Thank you for your prayers, thank you for your donations and thank you for sharing on Facebook and twitter.
Love to all!
Organizer
Helen Lotus
Organizer
Laval, QC
