On February 9, our daughter, Joah’s mother, sister, niece, cousin, and aunt was presented to the emergency room in severe pain. She also had a golf-ball-sized lump in her neck. As luck would have it, she was in Rochester, Minnesota, home of the famed Mayo Clinic, and they immediately recognized that Jessie was in dire straits.

A neck biopsy showed grade 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Grade 4 means that the lymphoma has metastasized. In Jessie’s case, to the bone. CT scan showed masses in the chest, ribs, pelvis and hips. This is the reason for the intractable pain she was in.

A month as an inpatient involved high dose therapy of five different chemotherapeutic drugs. Some were given IV and some directly into the spinal fluid via spinal tap.

As an outpatient, one of the drugs given infused under the skin rather than through the blood vessel, resulting in a severe wound and sloughing of the skin and tissue on the forearm. She has now had a portacath placed in the chest for further chemo infusions. At the current time, she is on a chemo schedule where she is hospitalized for a week and then has two weeks off. Anyone who has had chemo or has witnessed someone who has knows that there is never a time during chemo cycles where you feel well. On April 4, she will go into the hospital for cycle 3 of 8.

In the interim between chemo cycles, it has been up to the family to find housing and arrange funding for meals and all incidentals. We would be most blessed and extremely thankful for any monetary or prayer donations that your heart leads you to.

Jessie has a long way to go, but as a family, we pray that her therapy relieves her pain and rids her body of the cancer that has invaded it.

Thank you everyone for your support and may God bless you