Cancer diagnosis emergency fundraising
Donation protected
Hello to everybody listening.
It's been a very long year. Melissa received a diagnosis of Signet Ring Cell Carcinoma of the stomach on December 2nd of 2019. We ran a very successful fundraiser at the beginning that raised what we needed and took care of peripheral costs of what we needed. I do want to be perfectly clear that her treatment is covered entirely and we are not in any way raising money to cover the costs of treatment, as we live in Oregon and (for the time being) have terrific state medical coverage.
We have been through a lot. 4 rounds of FLOT chemotherapy starting 1/28/2020 through 3/11/2020. Then a partial gastrectomy where they removed two thirds of her stomach on 4/30/2020. Everything seemed clear immediately post surgery, but when pathology came back on 5/5/2020, it turns out that the margins were not clear and several lymph nodes were still cancerous left inside. After recovering from surgery she took 28 rounds of chemoradiation which included Xeloda, the pill form of Fluorouracil, and 50 gY of rads over a wide area of her remaining stomach and the questionable lymph nodes remaining. We now still have a significant amount of treatment she has to endure. On Wednesday she will once again begin chemotherapy, but this time the CAPEOX regimen which is two weeks of the pill form of Fluorouracil and an infusion of Oxaliplatin at the beginning of those two weeks, and then one week off, and then 3 more repetitions of this 3 week cycle.
Once all of this is done, she will then have to go in for laparoscopic surgery to evaluate, and to potentially surgically removed any lymph nodes that still might be engorged.
To add to this, her medical oncologist is now in Florence, 60 miles away, her surgical oncologist is now in Portland, 200 miles away, and her radiation oncologist, as of 10/16 is leaving the local Coos Bay practice, meaning we no longer have any local cancer care team.
We are now a family of four, which brings with it the benefit of my insulin now finally being covered because God willing we are poor enough in the eyes of the state.
But this also brings with it extreme financial duress, as I am supporting a family of 4 on one minimum wage income. I hate to do this in a time of Covid, but the bottom line is that we once again need financial help from anybody that can pitch in. This, God willing, should be the end of the treatment she should endure, and we only need to make it until January of 2021, when she can begin to focus on healing, and hopefully still get back on track to becoming a Correctional Officer, or any other position she can attain with her Criminal Justice degree, and our family can get back to being 100% self supporting. However due to the extreme amount of traveling we must now endure to maintain treatment, we are against the wall and unfortunately must ask for help once again, but I pray that this is the last time we have to do this.
God bless all of you, and even resharing this publicly will help us get to our goal.
Thank you all again.
It's been a very long year. Melissa received a diagnosis of Signet Ring Cell Carcinoma of the stomach on December 2nd of 2019. We ran a very successful fundraiser at the beginning that raised what we needed and took care of peripheral costs of what we needed. I do want to be perfectly clear that her treatment is covered entirely and we are not in any way raising money to cover the costs of treatment, as we live in Oregon and (for the time being) have terrific state medical coverage.
We have been through a lot. 4 rounds of FLOT chemotherapy starting 1/28/2020 through 3/11/2020. Then a partial gastrectomy where they removed two thirds of her stomach on 4/30/2020. Everything seemed clear immediately post surgery, but when pathology came back on 5/5/2020, it turns out that the margins were not clear and several lymph nodes were still cancerous left inside. After recovering from surgery she took 28 rounds of chemoradiation which included Xeloda, the pill form of Fluorouracil, and 50 gY of rads over a wide area of her remaining stomach and the questionable lymph nodes remaining. We now still have a significant amount of treatment she has to endure. On Wednesday she will once again begin chemotherapy, but this time the CAPEOX regimen which is two weeks of the pill form of Fluorouracil and an infusion of Oxaliplatin at the beginning of those two weeks, and then one week off, and then 3 more repetitions of this 3 week cycle.
Once all of this is done, she will then have to go in for laparoscopic surgery to evaluate, and to potentially surgically removed any lymph nodes that still might be engorged.
To add to this, her medical oncologist is now in Florence, 60 miles away, her surgical oncologist is now in Portland, 200 miles away, and her radiation oncologist, as of 10/16 is leaving the local Coos Bay practice, meaning we no longer have any local cancer care team.
We are now a family of four, which brings with it the benefit of my insulin now finally being covered because God willing we are poor enough in the eyes of the state.
But this also brings with it extreme financial duress, as I am supporting a family of 4 on one minimum wage income. I hate to do this in a time of Covid, but the bottom line is that we once again need financial help from anybody that can pitch in. This, God willing, should be the end of the treatment she should endure, and we only need to make it until January of 2021, when she can begin to focus on healing, and hopefully still get back on track to becoming a Correctional Officer, or any other position she can attain with her Criminal Justice degree, and our family can get back to being 100% self supporting. However due to the extreme amount of traveling we must now endure to maintain treatment, we are against the wall and unfortunately must ask for help once again, but I pray that this is the last time we have to do this.
God bless all of you, and even resharing this publicly will help us get to our goal.
Thank you all again.
Organizer
Ryan Faber
Organizer
Coos Bay, OR