Hello Everyone,

If this is the first you're hearing, we're sorry. Things have moved really fast over the last few weeks and we haven't had time to call and tell all of the important people.

About a month ago, Rose noticed some sub-sternal pain when she took a deep breath but didn’t think much of it. While on the Grand, she noticed decreased lung capacity when lying down. The decreased lung capacity got worse at the end of the trip, and she noticed that her resting heart rate had been steadily increasing over the last month as well, with it sitting in the high 80s/low 90s. She had a previously scheduled doctor’s appointment for Tuesday, 9/24, when she got back to Hood River, and her PCP decided to do a full workup, which led her to the ER after a positive D-dimer. While they initially suspected a pulmonary embolism, the chest CT showed a mediastinal mass. She got a biopsy done in Portland on Thursday, 9/26, which required an overnight stay, and then a PET scan and echo on Friday. Official pathology results came in on Wed, 10/2.

Diagnosis: Primary Mediastinal B Cell Lymphoma (uncommon aggressive, fast-growing lymphoma most often found in young women. Luckily, in most cases, curable). Stage 2 (multiple lymph node involvement but they are all on one side of the diaphragm).

Treatment: EPOCH-R (chemo + monoclonal antibody treatment).

What that means: 4 days of in-patient (in a hospital) treatment every 3 weeks. 3 treatment cycles then a PET scan to evaluate. Assuming it’s going well, continue with another 3.

Current Plan: Rose will be admitted, get a port placed, and start treatment on Monday (10/7). We will then go to Utah for the wedding, get married, and come back to Hood River to move out of the tiny house and get ready for round 2.

The positive side of all of this is that this type of cancer, though aggressive, has a well-known and typically successful treatment plan. We plan to stick around Hood River and continue working at Meadows in whatever capacity.

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind and we're still trying to get a grasp of what this truly means for the foreseeable future, but we do know that it's going to be expensive, especially on top of the wedding. Thankfully, Rose is insured but her out of pocket max is $7500 which will reset in January--a pretty huge chunk of what she makes in a year especially seeing as she won't be able to work at Meadows in the same capacity this winter.

Regardless of whether or not you have the funds to donate, we're hoping to use this GoFundMe as a way of updating people on how Rose is feeling, how chemo is going, and any other new information we get so please check in here if you want to keep up to date.

We feel the love from our community and hope to have positive updates soon.

Love,

Rose, Austen + Osa