Jeff’s Battle with 3 Cancers

Jeff started out having issues with feeling full quickly while eating, and occasional stomach discomfort. He went to the doctor to have testing ran and it came back as a 5cm tumor in his retroperitoneal area behind his kidney. While in the doctors office-we noticed his neck swollen and he had to have even more scans and biopsies done to find out what it was as well. The neck came back benign, but needs taken out through surgery. The scans that came back found more spots of potential malignancies in his lung, and pelvis bone.  They went ahead and did biopsies of his lung and retroperitoneal to have concrete evidence of cancer. They both came back positive. He finally got to the point he was throwing up while eating, and was admitted into the hospital for further testing and biopsies of the “possible malignant” spots. While in the hospital-they did even more scans and biopsies and found a cancerous ulcer in his stomach that was causing blockage and that’s why he was feeling full and couldn’t eat. They placed a NG tube in his nose the second day in the hospital and it’s been draining all the yucky stuff from his belly that is causing the problems. He hasn’t eaten in almost 2 weeks and has been an inpatient at the James for a week and a half. Their current plan is for surgery early next week to remove part of his stomach, and reconnect all the organs where they need to be while removing the cancerous ulcer & place a PEG tube in his stomach. If the other stomach mass (the retroperitoneal tumor) is invading any other organs-they may go ahead and remove it while they are in there (according to the first CT scan-it’s invading the IVC-which is the main artery that brings blood from the bottom half up to the heart.) He can’t start chemo until 6 weeks after his surgery-but he will be on chemo for a while, so he will be off work until further notice. He will have multiple other surgeries and hospital stays as well as medicines and medical supplies. I don’t want them to have to worry about money while he is off work. He is trying to keep very positive about the situation, even though it’s extremely hard at times. The doctors tell us he is an extremely complicated case. Not only is he dealing with 1 cancer (those are hard enough to deal with) he’s dealing with THREE! (The lung that has metastasized to the bone, the cancerous ulcer, and the retroperitoneal mass) He does have Li-Fraumeni-which is a cancer predisposition that puts him at a higher risk of getting multiple cancers. He wants to put up a good fight to be here to watch his grandbabies grow up, and it’s been so hard for him to be away from them for as long as he has-but we know he has to in order to get better! Please share, and help any way that you can! Every little bit counts and will go towards the medical bills that will be rolling in for all of his treatment! ❤️