Help Rachel Hesprich with Stage 2 Brain Tumor

Hi, my name is Emily. I am Rachel's sister and asking for your help to support Rachel and her husband, Josh Hesprich and their four boys through her brain tumor treatment. The past two-weeks have been very private for her family as they have navigated the initial shock of brain tumor diagnosis at the age of 35 years old, as well as brain surgery and recovery. Now that a diagnosis is in hand, and they know that they will be in the trenches dealing with a 6-week course of radiation and followed with a year of chemotherapy, it's time to ask for your support to help handle the unknown medical costs, travel costs, cost of time off from their small business and help support their family so Rachel can focus on getting well.

Here is Rachel's story that she updated family and friends with this week.

Hello family & friends!

First off, I want to thank everyone from the depths of my heart for all the prayers, messages, and support these past two weeks. Life has been a whirlwind of changes and it has been amazing to see the level of love and support that has been outpoured. Thank you!!

I’ve been waiting to get through today’s follow-up appointment before sharing too much info or too vague of info. With that said, this freak doctor trip started on Friday, November 11th. I had been experiencing migraines off and, on all week, and had actually gone to bed at 3:30 on Thursday because I just didn’t feel good. (Looking back on it, this was the fourth week-long series of intense migraines since April of this year). Friday morning Josh had found me about 5 am having a seizure. I don’t remember much from that morning – vague parts of the ambulance ride to Menomonee Falls. They did an MRI in the Falls but then transferred me to Froedtert after finding an imaging discrepancy.

Looking back, it was an intense whirlwind of exhaustion and testing. The two and a half hours follow up MRI showed the doctors what was causing my problem – a brain tumor. Despite this surprise news, the most qualified doctors in the state of Wisconsin that handle specialty cases like this snatched up my case and got me scheduled for surgery on 11/17. We opted to have the majority of the tumor destroyed with a laser which reduced the hospital stay and overall healing time. The next step is to follow-up with radiation (update is year of chemotherapy not known at time of her writing).

The technical nerdy name of my tumor is a Grade 2 oligodendroglioma. The good news is that this tumor at this phase is very treatable. 90% of the tumor has already been destroyed and they are optimistic that the radiation will effectively kill the remainder. However, this type of tumor will return someday as its just its nature. Doctors will be closely monitoring this the rest of my life and nip it in the bum when it does flair again.

In the meantime, thank you again for all the thoughts, prayers, help, and love that you have bestowed on our family. Josh and I could not even imagine how we would have gotten through this first treatment phase without all the support.

Love always,

Rachel

Please consider financially blessing Rachel, Josh and her four sons ages 9-15, JR, Ian, Oliver and Levi, as well as continuing to keep their family in your thoughts and prayers.

Emily