Help John and his family fight this battle
Donation protected
John Vidziunas is the son of very close friends who is fighting his battle with an aggressive form of cancer. This 30 year old young man has been fighting the disease for only a short while. The treatments have left John and his family in financial straits. Please read the write up about him below, and consider donating to help John and his family fight this battle.
How would I describe my son, John?
John loves to think and learn. He loves to talk about what he knows. As a teen, John spent endless hours teaching himself computer programming and graphics. In his early 20s, John found his niche, working at Microcenter in the “build your own computer” section. One customer took a special interest in John and urged him to apply for a job opening in IBM.
Unfortunately, after a few years, John’s entire department was axed. John returned to Microcenter. Having lost the seniority John worked in the Service Department instead of his original department. It was an hourly position, with no commission, and high demands. Particularly during the spring COVID-19 crisis, John worked 45 to 50 hours per week just to keep up with repairing the myriad of laptops and computers that everyone was now so dependent on. Unfortunately, he was not originally hired as a full-time employee. This made John’s health insurance rather expensive. He paid the premiums for a while, for as long as he could afford it on his hourly wages.
Perhaps because John was so busy working, he brushed off or rationalized the signals that indicated he was not feeling well. John’s coworkers urged him to get tested for COVID-19 as he was coughing profusely. The negative test results were reassuring and allowed him to go back to work.
A few weeks afterwards, John’s supervisor, noticed John strangely stuttering and fumbling for words. This is so unlike John, who fluently shapes his thoughts and ideas into words. John’s hand was also trembling and falling off his mouse. A coworker insisted on driving John to ER. That afternoon, I received an unexpected phone call from John, scared and isolated in the ER. I will never forget the moment I heard, “I have a brain tumor, Mom”. That night John was transported to Cleveland Clinic’s main campus for further testing, only to learn his brain lesion was the most recent footprint of an aggressive cancer metastasis. The horrifying diagnosis just kept unfolding over the next 3 days. Tumors had invaded John’s brain, lungs, his liver, and finally, ground zero, his colon. John had stage IVB Colon Cancer.
After feeling overwhelmed by the initial shock of such extensive cancer in an otherwise healthy young man, we spent a week and a half in agonizing limbo waiting for John’s treatment plan. But not before we had imagined the worst the very worst. From what I know, stage IV is…hopeless? And somehow, the communication we were awaiting from the hospital visit was fumbled. Finally, after a maze of communication with different hospital offices, I received a very apologetic phone call telling us to arrive for an early morning appointment at Cleveland Clinic. There we were put through a grueling, one day marathon to make up for the lost time. We shuttled across campus from one specialist to another, I vividly remember the sad, sympathetic faces of numerous care coordinators and nurses slipping the next appointment card into my hands, the one that magically placed us on the next specialist’s packed schedule. The tumor board met that very evening to develop a treatment plan and we held our breath, almost afraid to hope.
John received two Gamma Knife treatments for his brain tumor. Next, he received a short-term course of radiation directly to the colon tumor. John started an extremely aggressive, ongoing chemotherapy regiment. The adage “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” does not apply here. All these treatments to control the tumors have taken a tremendous toll on John. Our medicine cabinet is jammed with bottles of medications and prescribed supplements to keep John functioning, just to endure his chemo. This fall, John was hospitalized three times in succession after each round of chemo …that is how sick he has been. I have had no choice but to submit John to a lengthy ambulance rides three times. He has lost over forty pounds. He is very thin, sick, and often in pain. And most recently, John developed a C Diff infection that is life threatening.
And yet we hope…and wait…. for a turn for the better. John has a world class team of doctors, using cutting edge treatments and telling us, with sincerity, that John can beat this. The medical bills add up to amounts that give me panic attacks. We have signed John up for Medicaid. This has finally provided some security and relief. But there are so many incidentals it does not cover. Ambulance rides, adult diapers, a hospital bed, nutritional shakes for someone who can barely keep food down, the list goes on.
Depression, inability to work and live independently while in the prime of life, cancer…. all bad luck for a kind and gentle young man who did not deserve or ask for any of this.
How would I describe my son, John?
John loves to think and learn. He loves to talk about what he knows. As a teen, John spent endless hours teaching himself computer programming and graphics. In his early 20s, John found his niche, working at Microcenter in the “build your own computer” section. One customer took a special interest in John and urged him to apply for a job opening in IBM.
Unfortunately, after a few years, John’s entire department was axed. John returned to Microcenter. Having lost the seniority John worked in the Service Department instead of his original department. It was an hourly position, with no commission, and high demands. Particularly during the spring COVID-19 crisis, John worked 45 to 50 hours per week just to keep up with repairing the myriad of laptops and computers that everyone was now so dependent on. Unfortunately, he was not originally hired as a full-time employee. This made John’s health insurance rather expensive. He paid the premiums for a while, for as long as he could afford it on his hourly wages.
Perhaps because John was so busy working, he brushed off or rationalized the signals that indicated he was not feeling well. John’s coworkers urged him to get tested for COVID-19 as he was coughing profusely. The negative test results were reassuring and allowed him to go back to work.
A few weeks afterwards, John’s supervisor, noticed John strangely stuttering and fumbling for words. This is so unlike John, who fluently shapes his thoughts and ideas into words. John’s hand was also trembling and falling off his mouse. A coworker insisted on driving John to ER. That afternoon, I received an unexpected phone call from John, scared and isolated in the ER. I will never forget the moment I heard, “I have a brain tumor, Mom”. That night John was transported to Cleveland Clinic’s main campus for further testing, only to learn his brain lesion was the most recent footprint of an aggressive cancer metastasis. The horrifying diagnosis just kept unfolding over the next 3 days. Tumors had invaded John’s brain, lungs, his liver, and finally, ground zero, his colon. John had stage IVB Colon Cancer.
After feeling overwhelmed by the initial shock of such extensive cancer in an otherwise healthy young man, we spent a week and a half in agonizing limbo waiting for John’s treatment plan. But not before we had imagined the worst the very worst. From what I know, stage IV is…hopeless? And somehow, the communication we were awaiting from the hospital visit was fumbled. Finally, after a maze of communication with different hospital offices, I received a very apologetic phone call telling us to arrive for an early morning appointment at Cleveland Clinic. There we were put through a grueling, one day marathon to make up for the lost time. We shuttled across campus from one specialist to another, I vividly remember the sad, sympathetic faces of numerous care coordinators and nurses slipping the next appointment card into my hands, the one that magically placed us on the next specialist’s packed schedule. The tumor board met that very evening to develop a treatment plan and we held our breath, almost afraid to hope.
John received two Gamma Knife treatments for his brain tumor. Next, he received a short-term course of radiation directly to the colon tumor. John started an extremely aggressive, ongoing chemotherapy regiment. The adage “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” does not apply here. All these treatments to control the tumors have taken a tremendous toll on John. Our medicine cabinet is jammed with bottles of medications and prescribed supplements to keep John functioning, just to endure his chemo. This fall, John was hospitalized three times in succession after each round of chemo …that is how sick he has been. I have had no choice but to submit John to a lengthy ambulance rides three times. He has lost over forty pounds. He is very thin, sick, and often in pain. And most recently, John developed a C Diff infection that is life threatening.
And yet we hope…and wait…. for a turn for the better. John has a world class team of doctors, using cutting edge treatments and telling us, with sincerity, that John can beat this. The medical bills add up to amounts that give me panic attacks. We have signed John up for Medicaid. This has finally provided some security and relief. But there are so many incidentals it does not cover. Ambulance rides, adult diapers, a hospital bed, nutritional shakes for someone who can barely keep food down, the list goes on.
Depression, inability to work and live independently while in the prime of life, cancer…. all bad luck for a kind and gentle young man who did not deserve or ask for any of this.
Organizer and beneficiary
Donna and Tara Mikuzis
Organizer
Shorewood, IL
Ramunas Vidziunas
Beneficiary