My sister-in-law, Brooke Reed, is facing a difficult battle with melanoma that has metastasized and spread to her brain. I apologize now for the long, long post (I hate reading long posts), but this is also long, long overdue.

Several years back Brooke had a medium sized skin melanoma removed from her leg. She underwent scans and saw melanoma specialists and they were certain the cancer had not spread and that she was in the clear. Fast forward to early last year and she found a lump that had started growing under the skin in her upper thigh/groin area. She immediately sought treatment for this and was confirmed to indeed be a reoccurrence of the melanoma that had still somehow metastasized and spread in her body. She consulted with specialists in Columbia who decided to first treat her whole body with immunotherapy prior to attempting to remove the tumor so that they would hopefully deter the cancer from spreading further. This treatment was not successful. She underwent these treatments for 6 months and when they finally decided it was time to move on to something more aggressive the tumor had quadrupled in size. Earlier this year she was accepted into a promising clinic trial with even more advanced specialists at Duke. Four weeks ago she began what should have been 4 weeks of injections, finally followed by surgery to remove the tumor. On Monday of this past week she traveled to Duke for her 3rd injection but was unable to receive treatment due to the side effects that were present from the previous two weeks. Then on Wednesday morning she called her mother early in the morning just as the kids left for school and was having extreme difficulty with speech and cognition and was asking her to come and help. Once my mother-in-law Annette arrived it was extremely evident that she needed help and needed it fast. Paramedics and the doctors on call that they spoke with believed she was likely having a stroke and therefore called ahead to the local Chester hospital where the ambulance transported her and she was then immediately flown by helicopter to CMC Main in Charlotte. From there the morning progressed fairly quickly with CT scans and MRIs revealing that it was in fact not a stroke but was lesions on her brain indicating the melanoma had metastasized even further. Later that day she was again transported to Duke so her cancer team there could review her scans, start additional testing, and come up with their new treatment plan for her. They were able to get her brain swelling mostly under control with medicine/steroids and she is now resting at home. She will return to Duke next Friday, March 28th, to undergo brain surgery to remove the tumors and then she will undergo radiation as well, and somewhere in the process will need another surgery to remove the tumor on her leg.

This whole ordeal has been and will continue to be a huge financial stressor for Brooke and her 8 children. For 90% of Brooke’s adult life she has been a extremely committed, over achieving, full-time stay at home mom to her kids that now range from 1st grade to age 22. Just prior to her second melanoma diagnosis, she and her husband separated and he has since moved out of state and thus she has faced the majority of this ordeal as a single parent. Brooke had began working full-time at her children’s school in recent years and was even coaching several athletic teams. However, her treatments this past year have wreaked havoc on her body and she has not been able to work consistently. With the newly developed symptoms her ability to work will be further diminished. Please consider helping in any way you can! I will continue to post updates as her treatment progresses.