Christopher Ryder

January 14, 1961 - December 10, 2025

This is for Chris Ryder, a father, a brother, a husband, and a grandfather.

Hi, I’m Sarah. At the end of July, my father was admitted into the hospital when he had pain in his side, when they did a chest X-ray they discovered that his lungs were filled with fluid and he had an egg shaped tumor growing on the outside of his lung. That day they drained over 800 ml of fluid out of his right lung. The following day they took him to do a biopsy of the tumor. On August 7th he had an appointment with an oncologist. That day rocked all of our worlds. Advanced stage 4 Metastatic Non Small Cell Lung Cancer. He was immediately started on a strong corse of Chemotherapy. With my father living in New York we all agreed he would be better off living in Florida around his family and grand children. At the end of August he was finally down in Florida with his family. But that began a really long downhill battle. Even while continuing Chemotherapy and immunotherapy, his state worsened. On October 15th, he was admitted into the VA hospital, his condition at its worst. There turns out there was an infection in his legs, that cannot get better. The infection led to his leg loosing circulation, and with the infection being so bad, they cannot resume chemo. So now the cancer will continue to grow. At this point, the doctors don’t know what will take him out first, the infection or the cancer. My father was just transferred into hospice yesterday, with potentially only a couple weeks left, maybe less. Our family was not ready for all of this to happen so quickly, we all thought we would have more time. But now its time to prepare for the inevitable.