
Help for Cancer Warrior Karen Claassen Rudert
Donation protected
On behalf of our mother, Karen Rudert / Claassen, we are asking for your help to give her a fighting chance of beating an extremely rare form of cancer. We are trying to get her to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, which specializes in new methods to treat her form of cancer.
Karen’s Story
It started with a pain in her lower back that followed a long day of gardening in early Spring – a labor of love for her property, perched high on a graded vista of the Columbia River and across a mountain kingdom of evergreens. Our mother had only recently moved back permanently to the Spokane Indian Reservation and built her house there. After nearly 40 years in the D.C. area, she had retired from the school system and finally returned home.
It was easy to write off the backache; easy, too, to assume that the growing neuropathy in her legs was a residual symptom of former chemotherapy. Easy to believe the medical opinion of the doctor who prescribed physical therapy over referring her to a neurologist for her rapidly declining mobility. By the time professional opinions led to an MRI of her back it was October. Nearly three weeks later in early November she received the results. They were so harrowing that specialists now worked quickly to confirm what had been found: a tumor of innumerable lesions throughout the meningeal layer of her spinal cord and brain.
This Rare Cancer
Leptomeningeal disease (LMD) is a rare, severe complication that normally presents after years of battling cancer. Patients typically only survive four to six more weeks after diagnosis, and treatment can only extend that time to a median of three to six months. This is because cancers that cross the blood–brain barrier and into the cerebrospinal fluid are given their own safe harbor in which to proliferate, where they are difficult to treat.
And then there is our beautiful and precious mother, the rarest kind of person, whose medical case is incredibly unusual - even within this rare condition that would dare to match her. Because for all their searching, the doctors could not find where the disease had started. There was no origin beyond the central nervous system (CNS), and it was not from her previous bout with ovarian cancer.
More tests followed (a laminectomy biopsy along with genetic profiling) that ultimately revealed that undetected cutaneous melanoma had arisen in her spine – without so much as a mole. This presentation is so rare it affects only 1 out of 10,000,000 cancer patients. Mom’s cancer also has a uveal (eye) melanoma genetic profile, despite being the cutaneous variety. Her melanoma is not only unique – it is uniquely devastating.
The age of immunotherapy has changed LMD for some in the last few years. Miracles have resulted from certain genetic mutations that have granted some of these patients up to nearly an additional decade of survival. However, the newness of these clinical trials limits anything that resembles our mother’s diagnosis to a handful of case studies. We are clinging not just to hope, but to the threshold of cancer research as it stands in 2023.
Our Goal
Therefore, we seek a consultation with the #1 cancer research institution in the United States, MD Anderson in Houston, Texas. MD Anderson has a research team that targets LMD. (For more information, see websites listed below.) As other treatment options have faded, MD Anderson is our only hope. But getting treatment in Houston will exhaust our funds. We need help with transportation and lodging. The Spokane Tribe, which has been gracious in helping sponsor our mother’s treatments, has a limit on its own pool of financial resources. We anticipate medical expenses that we must pay in full.
For Christian and me, there is no question about going to the ends of the Earth if there is a sliver of hope for her recovery. We lost our father in 2008 to cancer. In the 15 years since, Karen has been our world’s center – not just our mother but our best friend.
Those of you who are lucky enough to know Karen also recognize her contributions to this world. She is among those who have selflessly devoted themselves to society’s most vulnerable and overlooked. Her long career was spent mentoring children with emotional and intellectual disabilities, providing resources and support to those from troubled homes.
Now is her time of need. Another spring is approaching. Please help our mother live to see it and continue to work in her beloved garden.
For more information:
Overview of the Disease (in its less complicated form):
A program for LMD at MD Anderson:
Organizer and beneficiary
Savannah Rudert
Organizer
Davenport, WA
Karen Rudert
Beneficiary