Friends, Family, and Community, 

I’m reaching out to you as a daughter who loves her (step)dad so incredibly much and would do anything to help him. This has been created in hopes to help support my stepdad, Jeff Winter, and my mom during the most difficult time of their lives. 

As some of you may know and some of you may not, Jeff was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 recurrent metastatic melanoma at the young age of 44 years old.

This was very unexpected and he was diagnosed as a result of newly onset confusion, migraines, vomiting, and a few other symptoms that brought him into the ED on Friday Sept. 26th.

Jeff had recently had bacterial pneumonia so they initially thought it could be sepsis. But, his symptoms quickly started looking more like a stroke which prompted them to run more scans.

He has had several cancerous spots removed from his skin over the past few years, 1 of them being confirmed melanoma about 5 years ago on his back. They are thinking it grew back and metastasized from there. He had a bronchoscopy to biopsy the masses in his lungs, on Monday Sept. 29th, which confirmed it to be metastatic malignant melanoma.

It has metastasized to his brain, lungs, and liver.

We saw a Radiation Oncologist, on Fri. Oct. 3rd, who explained to us that he actually has at least 14 tumors in his brain, possibly more (they initially thought 5). However, he said the volume of the tumors is low, meaning even though 5 are bigger than the others, they still are all very small and we hopefully have caught this soon enough that we may have a better chance at fighting this.

They are planning to do whole brain radiation which will deliver the best targeted radiation to the tumors. It will be 10 total treatments in 2 weeks, and the plan is to start Monday Oct. 13th.

He has another appointment on Tuesday for a ‘trial run’ of the radiation, to set up the mask, do a scan and get ready for the treatments. He also has appointments with a Medical Oncologist to discuss the other lesions in his lungs and liver (we think 3 in the lungs and 1 in the liver but we’ll see what the specialist says). They sent his lung biopsy sample to a lab in Chicago to be multiplied and grown so they can extract the DNA sequence from it to see if there is one treatment or medication that has been proven more effective than the other for his specific type of tumors. This can take about 3 weeks so that’s why they plan to start on the brain first.

We are told they typically wait about 2-3 months following radiation to rescan. This is because the radiation can cause increased swelling in the brain and they want to allow time for all extra swelling to go down prior to scanning again.

He was able to discharge home after a few days inpatient and has been taking oral steroids. The steroids have been helping substantially with the symptoms, he’s much more like himself and coherent.

They think the tumors in his brain may have triggered an intense migraine resulting in the stroke-like symptoms he was experiencing that brought him in. The amount of swelling in his brain is minimal at this time and shouldn’t have caused the symptoms he was having, but they are concerned he may experience more migraines (and therefore possible return of those symptoms) during radiation as this can cause increased swelling. But, it’s going to be a wait and see, take it day by day sort of thing.

Jeff has been able to keep optimism through this all and is as ready as he can be to start this fight with the support of his family and friends.

Neither Jeff nor his wife, Jen, have been working since Jeff’s ED visit. It’s still uncertain when they will be able to return to work with upcoming treatments, many many appointments, and managing symptoms. My younger sister is in highschool and primarily lives with them, and they have two pups to care for as well. 

This is being created in the hopes to minimize their financial stress during this tough time.

Thank you in advance for any and all donations, and if you’re not able to donate at this time, a share is just as beneficial!

We will continue to share updates here as we are able.