Help Jessica and Her Family Through Cancer Battle

Dear Friends, Family, and Kind Strangers,

We are reaching out to you today with heavy hearts to share the story of my wife Jessica, a devoted wife and mother to our four beautiful children. Jessica was diagnosed with tongue cancer (squamous cell carcinoma) a little over a year ago, a diagnosis that has turned her life—and ours—upside down. As she continues her fight with this disease, we are humbly asking for your help and support to ease a bit of the burden that our family is starting to have after dealing with this for so long.

She has always been the anchor in our home, holding everything down, and being the best mother our children could ask for while I was away from the family for a big part of my 20+ year career in the Navy. She has always been a giving and nurturing mother to our children through the tough times, even now as she faces her own mortality, her focus remains on the wellbeing of our home and children.

We had so many dreams and goals we were still working towards. Hopes of expanding our small business after a much needed break for some family time after my retirement. Things haven't quite worked out how we had hoped since her diagnosis though. After her surgery she needed round the clock care and I was her sole caretaker. We managed the best we could, but after so much time it started to become rather overwhelming. I was her full-time caretaker, countless appointments, needing to take care of the children and our home on my own all while being a full-time student. And of course, we do not have any family around so outside help wasn't an option.

Her Battle so far:

Back in June 2023, she thought she just had a sore in her mouth. It made it hard for her to eat, but she thought nothing of it for some time. Of all things, she simply thought she overdid it with candy, Fireballs of all things. Once the sore didn't go away, Jessica finally decided enough was enough and scheduled an appointment with her PCP. She was seen on June 27 and her PCP took a look, thought something did not look right and wanted to get her into ENT right away. The next day, June 28th, she was seen by ENT, where they did two biopsies of her tongue. They had the same concerns that her PCP had, that it could possibly be cancer. On July 5th, her ENT Doctor had her come in to go over the results from the biopsies. Jessica had a feeling but when her doctor told her that the biopsies were positive for squamous cell carcinoma, her nightmares became reality and her battle began.

She was referred over to EVMS Ears, Nose, and Throat Surgeons due to the depth of invasion with the tumor on her tongue and the possibility of needing to have a hemiglosectomy. Upon meeting with her surgeon at EVMS on July 14th, he provided an examination and went over her results of the biopsies as well as her pet/ct scan. He confirmed, that in order to treat it, she would need to have a hemiglosectomy and neck dissection. Along with the hemiglosectomy, they would be taking a flap of skin and one of the arteries from her arm to reconstruct the portion of her tongue they needed to cut out. They would also be taking a skin graft from her thigh to replace the skin flap on her forearm. It all really started to set in with how serious the situation was and how much recovery and therapy she would need. Even with everything going on she continued to be strong and await her surgery date.

Surgery was set for August 2nd. We arrived at the hospital early in the morning and the surgery lasted roughly 10 hours. She had two surgeons involved in the procedure. One to cut the tumor out and perform the neck dissection while the other surgeon handled the reconstruction of her tongue and skin graft.

Out of the 21 lymph nodes taken from her neck, two of them were positive for the squamous cell carcinoma. She was out of surgery just after 6pm with her life changed forever and a long road to recovery.

She stayed in the hospital for 8 days to ensure the swelling went down and she was able to breathe on her own. She went home with a nasal feeding tube and continued with that for 8 weeks before removing it to begin her radiation.

When radiation began, she was scheduled to start 30 treatments of to her head and neck. She went to Norfolk General Monday-Friday for 6 weeks until her radiation was completed. Her last day being November 15th, 2023.

Along with radiation she had started on all of her physical therapies which was usually several appointments a week along with the daily radiation.

As far as she was coming, we had high hopes of getting past this horrible and lifechanging time. Little did we know what would show up on her following scan in February of 2024.

She had her scan on February 12 and the results came a few days later. They found a metabolically active nodule in her lower right lobe of her lung. From that point, they scheduled Jessica to go in and have a biopsy completed of the spot on her lung. Biopsy done and again, positive for squamous cell carcinoma.

From there we found out that she was a good candidate for immunotherapy (Keytruda). They were also going to send her back to radiation to get the spot in her lung radiated, confident that will kill the spot. This radiation stint was thankfully only 3 treatments.

The Keytruda on the other hand is done through IV infusion and hers was every 6 weeks. Everything seemed to be going well for her first few treatments, she wasn't really having any side effects from the treatment. It wasn't until she was almost due for her 4th treatment that her body had a really bad reaction.

Because of that reaction she could not take in any liquid or chew, swallow anything at all. She was given several rounds of steroids in hopes of calming things down. Things did get a bit better, but she was still left unable to have proper function of her swallowing.

From that reaction they also found another spot on her neck that came back positive for cancer. So at this point she has had two spots on her lungs and now a spot on her neck. She has been given a break from keytruda at the moment. They are wanting to get a full body scan to get a better idea of whats going on and plan to regroup after that.

She is currently with a feeding tube, something she needed much sooner than she got. She has lost a great deal of weight and is extremely weak because of it. She doesn't have much energy beyond getting up to go to the bathroom and I am needing to help her shower.

This has been a very big eye opener and has been one of the scariest moments for us so far. We are realizing the road ahead is not going to get any easier and we have to be honest with ourselves at this point.

We can no longer do all of this on our own as all of her care has started to become very overwhelming.

Our battle ahead...

Cancer is a word no one wants to hear, especially when you have young children who depend on you. Jessica has always been a fighter, but this battle is one she can no longer face alone with just her and myself. It is starting to wear her down.

We have so much ahead of us such as intensive treatments, possible surgery, radiation, an unfortunate possibility of chemotherapy, all of which will take a significant toll on her and our family physically, emotionally, and worse of all, financially.

Our family has been doing the best we can so far, but as time goes by, things are getting tougher to manage on our own. Our only real income is my retirement and what little we make from our business, something that has greatly suffered since so much of our time and energy goes into her care.

Jessica has always put her children and family's needs first. Her love and dedication to her family are unparalleled. However, the demands of her treatments mean she will be unable to work and provide for her family as she has always done. The stress of mounting medical bills, along with the day-to-day costs of raising our children is overwhelming. Her treatment takes up a very big chunk of time each day, making it very difficult to focus on anything else.

We desperately need your help in this very troubling time of our lives.

This GoFundMe campaign is set up to hopefully help provide some financial relief and peace of mind for Jessica during her treatment and recovery. The funds raised will go directly towards the running of our house. Helping us pay our bills and cover our food cost. Her countless appointments and the amount of gas it takes really adds up. We don't ask this lightly, believe me, we are not usually the ones who ask for help of any kind. It is just unfortunate that we are now finding ourselves to be in this position with no other reasonable options.

If you can just find it in your heart to reach out and help our family. No matter the size, it will truly make a world of difference for Jessica and our family.

If you're unable to contribute financially, please consider sharing this campaign on social media to help us reach as many people as possible. We are not people who take this type of thing lightly. It is with great regret that we are even in the position to be asking this in the first place. Thing is, if it wasn't an absolute need, we would never dream of asking this of people, honestly.

We absolutely believe in the power of community, and with your help, Jessica can be given the peace of mind to be able to focus on what really matters most right now fighting this cancer and being there for her children while she still can be. We are incredibly grateful for any possible support you can provide, whether it's a donation, a share, or a heartfelt prayer. We are calling on all of the positive love that we can right now. We know the road ahead will get much harder and she will need all of her strength and focus to hopefully make it through.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for standing with our family during this challenging time.