Jennifer Staub-DeWesplore

Ahhhh…..50 years old …..We are plugging along, proudly watching our now fledgling adult children take flight, we are settled in love, career and living a comfortable, and very blessed life. Nothing like relishing in God’s love & light! Because we all know, time is a treasure and we need to spend it very wisely! June 4, 2019, Jennifer Straub-Dewesplore’s simple & somewhat routine, Linn, Missouri, life was shattered……She was torn out of her peaceful morning sleep with excruciating pain and uncontrollable vomiting. Jenn, knew something was terribly wrong and she knew she needed to be taken to the emergency room. Jenn was admitted to St. Mary’s due to her serious and sudden illness. After her horrible pain was being managed, she began a multitude of tests & procedures, one of which was a colonoscopy. That procedure would change her life forever. Jenn was only 50 years old, set to be 51 this month! It isn’t normally medically recommended to get your first colonoscopy until age 50! So if you are reading this, and around that age, please get a colonoscopy if you haven’t had one! Jenn received a diagnosis more frightening than her worst nightmare. Colon Cancer, no signs until it had been growing and poisoning her body for approximately 7 years! Seven years! No signs! No symptoms! If that makes your stomach drop, mine too…..Jenn was rushed into surgery, not even enough time for her mostly local family to even get to St. Mary’s to hug and kiss her before she was taken to the operating room. Jenn had a knowledgeable and a skilled team of doctors and nurses at her side, her strong faith & trust in God, and prayers and love being sent through God from her family and many, many friends. Her surgery went very well and they removed over half of her large intestine, her appendix, part of her abdominal wall and 21 lymph nodes. It turned out three of the lymph nodes were cancerous. This non-symptomatic disease did so much damage unbeknownst to Jenn. How can that be? With cancer, we all know, her nightmare has just begun. Like most of us mother’s, her first thoughts are to her two children, Jesse and Briana. How am I going to tell them? Am I going to get to be a part of their someday children’s lives? Will I get to see them get married…..? She also didn’t want to share the news with her family, because you see, Jenn’s family has been hit extremely hard with cancer. Jenn’s sister, Julia, survived breast cancer, TWICE, and her brother, Dennis, was actively battling throat cancer and had just had to go to the extreme measure to have his voice box removed in order to save his life. Dennis was also just beginning his chemotherapy and radiation journey. Jennifer, would be the third of Fred and Donna Staub’s six children to have cancer. How can she break her parent’s heart’s further? Besides, her father was battling his own health issues with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Jenn, always strong and always there for her family, now was the one who needed the support and help and prayers from her already suffering family. Jennifer decided immediately she wanted to fight for her life, for herself, her children, her family, her ever present and supportive significant other, KP, and her many friends. Let me pause and tell you who I am and who has the privilege to write this for Jenn….I am Cindy Piant….I have known Jenn for about 20 years. I met her one snowy day when, my awesome driving skills, came into play…..I rear ended her….yep…..I did. I was mortified and scared what the driver was going to do, were they going to yell at me? Nope, ever sweet and funny Jenn…she got out of her car and made me feel at ease immediately. I firmly believe situations/people come into our lives for a reason. We got to talking and I told her of a vacant job at the United States Probation Office where I worked. Jenn, due to her history of always being a hard worker and her being the charismatic person she is, she got hired! We’ve been friends since….very lucky I rear ended her car. I love her and treasure her. She is without a doubt one of the strongest people I have ever met. I have seen her go through many ups and downs, in the past 20 years, with grace and strength. Enough about me……more about Jenn’s journey. The doctors at St. Mary’s stated she needed specialized cancer treatment. With Jenn’s desire to survive, she reached out to many of you to seek guidance and recommendations for a miracle team that you may know of, since so many of us are touched, hell, not touched…..but pummeled by cancer. With your outstanding recommendations (and her Godmother’s persistence), she chose Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. Her doctors, surgeons and nursing staff helped her understand the frightening and uncertain road that lay ahead of her, out of her control. This is where she learned she had Stage IV metastatic colon cancer after undergoing MRI/CT scans. She was also given another blow, she may have Lynch Syndrome, a hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC). In simple terms, she could pass this life altering disease to her kids. With God’s grace, she didn’t have Lynch Syndrome. With a win in her corner, Jenn battled on, grateful she didn’t unknowingly pass this on to her kids. Jenn was advised her course of treatment would consist of seven, bi-weekly, courses of 48 hours of chemo. She traveled to St. Louis, see her miracle doctors/staff, and be hooked up to chemo with all of the other brave and scared souls sitting in the room with her. She noted, way too many people in there, a wide variety of ages. So many smiling and laughing, so many appreciative of the help and hope they are getting there. Now, I know your wondering, 48 hour chemo? No, she didn’t have to sit in that chair for 48 hours, she was able to bring a purse-like apparatus home with her to continue her treatments after a few hours to make sure she didn’t have a negative reaction to the poison being pumped into her veins. Jenn, the trooper, didn’t complain much and thought it to be relatively easy. I think it’s harder on her than she lets on, but that is Jenn. She had another set of MRI/CT scans and was blessed with the news that the cancer had shrunk by half! Great news for sure, but remember I said earlier that people or situations come into our lives for a reason?? Well, this doctor at Barnes had led some successful surgery trials to help in the quest to conquer colon cancer. Jennifer was initially told that the procedure had not been approved outside of the trials, but two weeks later, it had been approved, the stars aligned, and God intervened. This doctor, the only one in the world, that performs the HIPEC surgery performed this 7-hour surgery on November 4, 2019. A centimeter out of Jennifer’s entire abdominal wall had been removed and he poured a “heated chemo flush” on the area. He also closely examined all of her organs, took out a part of her liver, her ovaries, part of her small intestines, any other suspicious looking areas, and three more lymph nodes. Two more nodes were cancerous when they were later tested. Jenn spent two days in the Intensive Care Unit and three days in a regular room at the hospital before she was released to recover for 6-12 weeks. She was thankful she was given a reprieve over the holidays, at least she thought….. December 13, 2019, just ten days after her dad, Fred, was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer he passed away with Jen and other family members by his side. Anyone who knows Jenn, knows that she was her daddy’s little girl and they shared an unbreakable bond. This broke Jenn to the core. With a broken heart, and a month later, Jenn, had another round of MRI/CT scans, which showed two spots on her spleen but the doctors are optimistic, it is not cancer. Her CEA (cancer markers) have also decreased. She began her bi-weekly, 48-hour chemo treatments again on January 15, 2020. She is expected to complete her chemo treatments March 25, 2020. That day she will ring the coveted bell to signal she is finished with treatments! Something, that I realized I haven’t shared yet….Jenn only took Wednesday’s, the day she had to travel to St. Louis for her chemo treatment, off from work. Sitting home, on Thursday’s, attached to the apparatus I mentioned earlier, she continued to work from home, while receiving chemo. On Friday, she also worked from home, when she could fight off the effects of the chemo. The weekend of her chemo treatments Jen was usually sleeping, nauseous, and out of commission, but on Monday, this woman was back at work with her Jenn smile, her sarcasm and her infectious laugh. Enduring the effects of neuropathy, she is still in the office typing and working diligently! Wow, amazing, she didn’t want to make a hardship for anyone at work. Jenn is a hard worker, often working a second job, to make ends meet for her and her kids. I visited Jenn in the hospital at St. Mary’s, before she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She shared how concerned she was because the multitude of labs that the hospital needed to run in order to figure out what was wrong with her, were not covered by her insurance, because her insurance didn’t cover the lab that St. Mary’s used. Jenn has never dressed lavishly or lived out of her means, ever. As the medical bills began to mount, she drained her savings and opened up a credit card, with 24 months no interest, and started paying her part of her life saving treatments that her insurance would not cover. In desperation, she asked her parents for money to help pay more bills. Jennifer Staub DeWesplore is fighting the biggest fight of her lifetime and has the added stress of surmounting medical bills that she has no idea how to pay. I have told her that she has fought the second battle long enough alone and this is where I am asking her family, friends, and our central Missouri community, to join me in helping Jenn with her financial burden. She is proud and strong and has fought the idea of requesting donations, but she is to that breaking point, financially, where it is causing stress that can be detrimental to her on-going fight for her life and her credit that she has worked to sustain during her adult life. She contemplated a second job again, but does not have the energy while going through treatments. Jennifer thinks of others, so often, as I have found over the past 20 years that I’ve been blessed to have known her. Please let’s first pray for her to be able to ring the bell when she is cancer free and second, please, help her with her financial burden. Knowing her type of cancer can come back some time in her life, is stress enough, which we can’t alleviate, BUT we can help in this huge way. As a heartfelt thank you for your kind financial assistance, I will be donating a set of gift cards for a dinner & movie to four of our angels who donate. Thank you for reading Jennifer’s story and tune in to Caring Bridge for updates. Thank you again, and God Bless!