Mother of 3 battling stage 4 gastric cancer

December 21, 2022

Meet OUR Anna.

ONE YEAR AGO:

Our sister-in-law, Anna, received a diagnosis of stomach cancer days before Christmas 2021. To say this was a shock is an understatement. Anna is VIBRANT. She is a wife, mother of three, daughter, sister, co-worker, and friend. She makes the best pierogis and the most delicious birthday cakes. She wore cowboy boots on her wedding day, and she and my brother were married in the woods behind their house under a canopy of green and May blue skies.

Anna has fought her way through 2022 with a patient determination. She spent the first six months undergoing traditional chemo treatments every two weeks. Fatigue. Nausea. Vomiting. Hair loss. Mouth pain. Numbness in her hands and feet. COLD. Anna watched her kids’ baseball games from home using her phone, while wrapped in sweaters and blankets. Sometimes, on an off-chemo week, she would feel up to going out and seeing one of her kids’ ball games.

Anna’s cancer journey has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows. The goal was always to prevent the cancer from spreading so that she could then have her stomach removed, which would give her the best possible chance of living.

This did not go according to plan. Despite six months of chemo treatments, the cancer still spread. Anna now has Stage 4 stomach cancer, and she has learned that the cancer cells spreading through her body happen to be an aggressive type. The treatment possibilities and survival rates decline at this point.

But HOPE prevails. Enter MD Anderson. This fall, Anna was fortunate to receive a referral to a cancer specialist at MD Anderson in Houston, Texas. The hope was that she would be able to receive an experimental chemotherapy treatment called HIPEC that targets her stomach cancer in a new way, thus relieving many of the debilitating side effects while preventing the cancer from spreading. If successful, she can go ahead with the surgery to have her stomach removed—i.e., her best chance.

Her doctor scheduled the procedure for November, but after driving to Houston from Illinois, they discovered that her platelet count was low—too low, and she would not be able to have the procedure. So, they rescheduled for December 13th, and Mike and Anna drove back home, making it just in time for Thanksgiving.

TODAY

Two weeks ago, we learned that Anna’s insurance provider had denied the procedure, even though they had given verbal authorization in November. Her doctor at MD Anderson set up a peer review and spoke to the insurance company, and just today, December 21, 2022, Anna received a letter from her insurance provider denying the procedure.

What does this mean?

How will this impact Anna’s life and her life expectancy?

(Doesn’t this seem like an incredibly MEAN thing to do to someone days before Christmas?!!!)

These are questions we are all trying to answer. But there is one question that Anna knows the answer to.

When prepping her Christmas shopping lists this year, my mom asked, “Anna, what do you want for Christmas?”

Anna replied, “a MIRACLE.”

Please partner with us as we attempt our own miracle--to raise funds to pay, at least partially, for Anna’s experimental chemo procedure at MD Anderson. i.e., Her best chance.

Author of Anna’s story: sister-in-law, Andrea Killian