Help Jeb and His Family Battle Cancer

You pray it never happens within your own family let alone to anyone....

Jeb went in for a recheck of a lump found on his lung last summer when he had his gallbladder removed. During the rescan they found that the lung lump was nothing and had not grown or moved but also showed a new larger mass on his liver. He was then scheduled to have a rescan later down the road to check the liver mass and make sure it was nothing also. He was also having some back pain and thought maybe he just tweaked it at work somehow.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and the back pain in worse and he now has pain in the middle under his sternum. I talked him into going into the ER to get it checked. After another rescan they found the mass on his liver had already grown and he also had multiple enlarged lymph nodes in his abdomen. He was transfered down to Wausau hospital where he spent all of Labor Day weekend going through tests and trying to get more answers. He underwent a liver biopsy that was sent out to Mayo clinic for more testing. After Labor Day weekend he was sent home to wait for biopsy results.

Two weeks later his symptoms got worse, and his doctors told him to return to the emergency room. After more testing they sent him in for an ERCP to put a stent in his liver because the enlarged lymph nodes were causing bile duct blockage in his liver. We were then told the biospy came back as Metastatic Carcinoma of unknown origin. After another two nights in the hospital he was sent home and scheduled for another biopsy to be sent for molecular testing. Testing that will hopefully tell us the origin of the cancer and what kind of treatment will work best for him to try and beat this.

On Monday September 23rd he underwent his second biopsy and port placement to receive chemo. Tuesday, he started his first chemo treatment. His chemo consists of him going into the cancer center where he sits for roughly 3 hours of treatment there and then goes home with a chemo pump to wear for the next 48 hours. Wednesday, he underwent another ERCP to put in a larger stent in his liver since his liver panels started to go in the wrong direction again.

Chemo was definitely hard. With multiple side effects including harsh nonstop nausea and exhaustion to just an overall horrible body feeling.

Coming up this next week on October 3rd he is scheduled for a PET scan to hopefully give us more insight as to how and where the cancer has spread.

In-between that time and his next chemo session on the 8th we are praying we get the molecular testing results and just more answers. We also have a second opinion appointment with UW Madison Health on the 13th and I have calls into a top cancer center in New York and one in Cleaveland.

It has been a very challenging time for the whole family trying to navigate this really horrible situation. The kids are starting to understand that dad will be home until further notice and that he has cancer. They know that the doctors are doing all they can to help and that life around home will look quite different with Dad and Mom being away for doctors' appointments and treatments.

We are so lucky to be surrounded my loving family and friends that help so much with the kids. Homeschooling has been a blessing too, with being able to have the kids home with Jeb the whole time and visit in the hospital whenever he was there without missing anything.

I will try and keep everyone updated as we receive more news and are able to process it ourselves. I try to keep up on text messages, but it can be overwhelming at times.

Please keep Jeb and our family in your prayers and pray that this can be beat. I know he is strong and will fight as hard as he can.

All our love,

Megan and The Ostrom Family