Hello,

My name is Greg Carroll and I am helping Pat Meyer, my best friend of 50 years, with the only wish he has that is actually within our control.

This loss of control came quickly and unexpectedly. Pat is currently fighting the battle of his life against brain cancer with the help and support of his wife, Michelle. Unfortunately, but unavoidably, this battle comes with mounting medical expenses and endless trips to doctors and specialists. He wants what any husband would for his wife at a time like this: to ensure that she is able to continue living in the home where they’ve raised their family and built their lives.

While we’re still unsure what the outcome of this situation will be, Pat’s hope is that Michelle will be financially able to remain in the place they’ve called home for over 20 years. Knowing his wife and family will be financially secure will allow him to focus all of his energy on beating cancer and getting back home with Michelle.

As long as I have known Pat, he would do anything to help out a friend or family member in their time of need, Pat is now in need of help from his community of family and friends, anything you can spare will be appreciated beyond expression by Pat and Michelle as they navigate this unbelievable situation.

How this battle began:

A few months back, things were getting very stressful for Pat at work. He took some time off and returned to work with a hopeful attitude. Things seemed a little better, but it wasn’t like it had been before. He felt a lot of anxiety and experienced frequent panic attacks. It quickly became clear that he needed professional help to manage this new challenge. Over time, he started taking medicine for anxiety, but it didn’t seem to help much and other issues continued to arise. His personality started changing. He stopped caring what people said, pushing people away, and vomiting due to panic attacks (or so we thought).

Things worsened dramatically in the past two weeks. He was expressing no emotion, experiencing dizzy spells and headaches, and had a loss of motor function on the left side of his body. He began having problems with his balance, and fell several times over the weekend. Something else was clearly going on and we quickly decided we needed to get him immediate medical help. They asked a few questions and shortly after, Pat was rushed to the emergency room. They took a CT scan and determined there was a mass in his brain and that would require surgery to have it removed. An MRI was done afterwards to get a better picture of the tumor.

Pat’s request at that point was to be transferred to Rochester, but there were no beds available, so we took the last ICU bed here in Mankato. We were very fortunate to have a Mayo-trained doctor available to come and perform his surgery. The surgery was performed yesterday, October 19th, and the surgeon successfully removed about 95% of the tumor, which was 2 inches in diameter. The remaining portion of the tumor was too close to major blood supplies to be removed.