Ashley's Fight with Osteosarcoma

Hi, I am Ashley. This past year has been the hardest time of my life. Every single day is a literal challenge to get through. In early May of 2022, my lower teeth started to ache, so bad I couldn't sleep most nights. Next thing I know, one of my teeth is slightly pushed up and there is a growing bump behind my front teeth. I immediately made an appointment with my dentist. My first mistake in this story was trusting this "dental professional," fast foward to appointment. Dentist decides my mouth is infected and the bump is an abscess. Schedule appointment for very painful unnecessary root canals. After these root canals are finished, all hell broke loose. Every day I would wake up and the lesion was bigger, darker, stinkier. My teeth were being pushed in every which direction, goes back to dentist, she gives me more antibiotics and tells me she will refer me to an oral surgeon. Weeks go by, I call the oral surgeons every single day, multiple times a day- none of them ever received a referral. Finally I have to call and force them to send referral while on the phone. Finally I get in to see an oral surgeon after developing a lesion the size of an orange off of my jaw. The painful tumor that has been ruining my life is finally removed Sep. 19, 2022. Two weeks later on a Saturday night my oral surgeon frantically calls us to inform me that the tumor on my jaw is osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. Even more rare to be on my jaw and growing at the rate it is. I have had my preliminary appointments at the Carbone Cancer Center at UW Health in Madison and will be entering very intense inpatient chemotherapy this week. This will be over a year long journey of just chemo treatments to try to save my life. Long inpatient stays will make going to work obviously impossible and we are begging for help to pay our basic bills and these insane hospital bills that are to come. Our 9 month old daughter will be without her mama for long painful periods of time and my husband will be holding down our home and homestead by himself during this time. Any bit helps.

Thank you!