Help Caden in his battle against stage 4 cancer.

Hello family, friends and kind strangers.

My name is Jen. I’m writing to ask for help on behalf of my 26 year old son, Caden. He is battling stage 4 metastatic melanoma.

After noticing a large irregular shaped mole behind his ear in 2018, Caden immediately went to the dermatologist and the sample came back malignant. At that point he was diagnosed with stage 3 melanoma. In a matter of weeks he had several surgeries. One surgery involved removing lymph nodes. The other surgery was to remove the cancerous mole behind his ear. A skin graft was taken from his thigh to cover the area behind his ear. He immediately started on immunotherapy that he would receive for the next eighteen months. In June of 2019 he rang the bell at his last treatment and was cancer free. He kept up on all of his scans and even in December of 2023 he showed no signs of the cancer returning.

Fast forward to March of this year.

After a few weeks of constant back pain, Caden decided to go to the hospital ER to try to get some relief. The ER staff ordered an X-ray. The X-ray showed several spots that were suspicious for cancer. Caden was hospitalized for a week. During this time, we received the devastating news that the cancer had returned and was in his spine, lungs, liver, spleen, pelvis, in addition to other spots scattered throughout his body. After several appointments and scans he was referred to the Karmanos Cancer Institute. Their plan of action was a high dose combination of immunotherapy. After only two doses it was stopped because his bloodwork was off and they couldn’t resume until his numbers were within normal range. In the meantime, they did another PET scan to see if it had shrunk any of the tumors. Not only did it not shrink any of the tumors but they had grown and spread in that short amount of time.

So this is where we are at now. Immunotherapy is no longer an option. The treatment plan going forward is radiation and a chemo pill followed by a brand new treatment for specific cancers that have not responded to other treatments. The radiation being done on his pelvis and spine are to relieve some of the pain he is dealing with and to help with mobility. The chemo pill is to try and slow the cancer progression down while they prep him for a recently approved treatment called TILs. He will undergo a surgery to remove part of a tumor. The tumor will be used to regrow his cells which will later be injected back into his bloodstream. The hope is that these newly generated cells will find and fight the cancer cells. This is a grueling and intense treatment. He will be hospitalized for at least two weeks and given high powered chemo to wipe out his whole immune system. When that is done they will inject these new cells with the hope that they destroy the cancer cells. The cost of this treatment is astronomical and that doesn’t even include all of the prep and hospital stays prior to it. That’s on top of the thousands of dollars he’s already accumulated in medical bills.

Caden has been working since he was 16 and was working at Trader Joe’s when diagnosed. His employer, bosses and crew are great and have been so supportive but the 3rd party handling benefits have been making everything difficult. He has not recieved any disability and they are now trying to take away his insurance. His savings is gone and we have taken on all of his bills. If you are reading this and do not know us, we are a blue collar, middle class family. We are doing our best but we need help to help Caden get this potentially life saving treatment.

This is where the money raised will go:

-Paying off medical debt already acquired.

-Paying for his ongoing and future care at Karmanos Cancer Institute.

-Most importantly paying for the TILs treatment that is the last chance Caden has at stopping this aggressively growing cancer.

He is a fighter. He beat cancer once and we are hopeful that with this new treatment he can beat it again.

Thank you for taking the time to read Caden’s story. Asking for help is never easy. Whether you donate, share or just simply keep Caden in your thoughts, it means more than words can express and we are grateful.