Blake’s Cancer Treatment Expenses

Hello & welcome to our page. As a family we have decided to start a GoFundMe to try to raise money for Blake’s upcoming medical bills, any living expenses & any other expenses related to his treatment. He doesn’t have insurance & since he has been discharged from the hospital he hasn’t been able to work & honestly we don’t know what the next year looks like.

Blake is 24 & the middle child, if you ask his sisters he is the favorite. He is the best uncle to his 2 nieces whom love him very much. You may be asking how we got here, we’ll let me explain.

Let’s start from the beginning. Roughly 3 months ago Blake started having tailbone pain which gradually got worse. Originally he thought it may be due to constipation. And the end of October he called me crying because he was in so much pain. It didn’t matter what position he was in there was pain. After talking to my CRNP at work I told him to go to the ER. After 4 hours they sent him home with ZERO work up. When I say zero I mean zero - no blood work, no imaging, no diagnostic’s at all to see why he was in pain. They did give him a steroid shot & oral steroids to take at home. And said for him to follow up with Spine & Neuro outpatient to get an MRI. When he called & said they did nothing I was furious. I told him to not leave that parking garage until I called & talked to his nurse. I talked to his nurse & the charge nurse & got no where. The medical part of me understands they probably just thought he was seeking pain meds but the momma part of me was angry they didn’t do anything to try to figure out what was wrong with him. He doesn’t have insurance so I asked my CRNP to order him an MRI outpatient at a facility where we could pay payments & she did. That MRI showed he had a small disk bulge at L4 & 5. Nothing really to worry about. After he finished his steroids the pain was better, not completely gone but tolerable. Until about December 3rd. On the 5th he called me at 3 in the morning & said he couldn’t deal with the pain anymore. At 1st I was hesitant to go back to the ER because they did nothing the 1st time but after talking to him & learning the pain was keeping him from peeing & pooping I got up & went to take him to the ER. When they triaged him they did a bladder scan & he had over 800 ml in his bladder, for all you none medical folks that’s a lot. He was then placed in a room & a foley put in. I was finally allowed to go back with him. They took him for a CT & all it showed was some free fluid in his abdomen but nothing remarkable & he needed to have an MRI. When they told us he needed another MRI Blake said no, he was in pain & ready to go. Luckily I was with him & pulled that good ole mom card & he got the MRI. This is when things went downhill. At 1st they come in & said it was a hematoma but it wasn’t long after that they came back & said it was a mass. They consulted Spine & Neuro but they said they don’t deal with anything below the lumbar region. So Ortho was up next & they said we don’t have a surgeon who can operate on it. The ER doctor that was seeing him came in the room in a panic & said we had to be transferred to UAB, Vandy or Erlanger for surgery. I asked if he didn’t have surgery could he be paralyzed & he said yes. My heart dropped to my stomach & I sent up a prayer. UAB accepted the transfer & 5 hours later a whole new workup began. We spent 5 days at UAB & had amazing care. We did MRI after MRI to try to get a better understanding of his mass, turns out it is a tumor. On December 7th a biopsy was performed & 4 samples removed. On the 10th we went home to wait. That’s the hardest part of all this - the waiting. As a mom I want to fix things but I can’t fix this, all I can do is pray & trust in God. Which is what I’ve done to get through this. On December 21, 2022 I received a call from the oncologist office to come in to review the biopsy results. I knew then it was cancer. I called Blake & told him I was on my way to get him that we had to go to Birmingham for results. After I talked to Blake Dr. Pritchard called & gave me the results & on our way I talked to Blake about it. Once we got to the Kirklin clinic there was more waiting. Of course there was lots of tension & short fuses with each other. Dr Eulo came in & said it is Blue Cell Sarcoma, this is a rare type of bone cancer. We asked tons of questions & learned about one type of BCS that is called Ewings Sarcoma, if it turns out this is the type that ole Timmy is then he will have a year of chemo. Hearing that devastated Blake, he thought he would need a couple months max. As of today we are still waiting on the final pathology to know exactly what we are dealing with. Until then all I can do is pray & trust. ️

Side note - we’ve name the tumor Timmy, you can also follow our journey on our FB page

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088743891306&mibextid=LQQJ4d