Lymphoma Care

Well, this is Carolyn, my wife of just over 12 years. Just two years in to our new marriage, she was diagnosed with a particularly stubborn form of Non-Hodgkins Follicular Lymphoma. It was discovered quite by accident when she got a scan for chronic pain in her back and hips. It was diagnosed as stage four. This scan was on a Friday afternoon.

Over the weekend, she got calls from two doctors telling her that they needed to see her right away. We both looked at each other and just gulped. In our guts, we knew. We got in early Monday morning and the one pain doctor came right out and said that according to the scans, her lymph nodes were seriously enlarged and it was throughout her body (hence the stage four diagnosis).

Athe the time, there was a relatively new treatment for it called Rituximab. It did quite a good job in knocking it down to below detectable levels. We were told that it would likely come back every ten years or so and when it did, all she needed to do was to repeat the courses of Rituximab.

Well, here we are, ten years later and indeed, it has now back — with a vengeance. Turns out the Rituximab was not the complete life-transforming drug it was first thought to be. Anticipating just needing another cycle of Rituximab, we were now being informed that she would need both Rituximab and a cocktail of chemotherapy on top of that. Turns out, Rituximab loses 50% of its efficacy each time around thus requiring the harder stuff.

So now, we are at the fourth of the six monthly cycles and her body is starting to reject the chemo. Her kidneys are being damaged, her blood pressure has dropped and her heart rate has accelerated. She wound up in the ER after a 'rapid response' call at the cancer center because her organs were headed towards a shut-down.

Now things are not looking very promising at this point.

Financial need.

We are both on disability due to psychological reasons therefore on a VERY limited budget. There is some charity help out there that is covering a little of the immediate medical costs but not nearly enough.

We need substantial financial help. This is expensive cancer to treat plus, we live 3+ hours from the hospital she is being treated at necessitating travel, food, and lodging. And we are flat broke. Since we live in the cruelest kind of medical system there is — a private, for-profit system where how much money you have dictates the quality of care you get. I am begging and pleading with anybody out there who will listen to help me raise the money I need to take care of my wife.

I have no idea how much her care this will ultimately cost therefore, I have set a goal for this campaign to a level that I 'think/hope will be enough.

Carolyn is an amazing, wonderful, beautiful smart, funny woman who loves me to no end and I love just as much. It would absolutely devastate me to lose her. Please help us. Thank you.