- K
- M
Hi my name is Loretta Naud and I'm fund raising for my husband Keith (Super Dad). He is a Son, Brother, Uncle, Best Friend, Husband, and Father of Daughter Taylor & Son Anthony.
His journey started back in 1983 at 28yrs old when he was diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He was very sick and had a staged laparotomy, went into remission for a short time, but his cancer came back . He spent several weeks at the Ronald McDonald house up at Stanford University in Northen California. Keith continued to have lots of ups and downs but did recover from that.
Fast-forward to 2015 when the doctors at Kaiser Permanente found Keith to be anemic . They performed some blood tests and a bone marrow biopsy where they found he has a new blood cancer, Walden Strom Syndrome (Macroglobulinemia). He would then have chemo once a week for several weeks while still working his 9-5. On my days off of work I would always take him to his appointments. The one time he tried to go on his own, I got a call from the emergency room that he had fallen on a car and broke a head light & had stiches in his hand. Again like with the Hodgkin's he got better, then 2 years later the cancer had returned. With this round he began to get all the negative side affects of the chemo including severe fatigue and neuropathy in his feet (which is still a symptom he deals with to this day). He was prescribed a wheel chair because he could not walk even short distance. Thank God he did seem to get better, but not 100% like his old self anymore.
Recently in December 2020, he was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer. They decided to remove his prostate on December 6th which involved a long recovery on top of a catheter for a week . And in Super Dad style he did not stop work (luckily he worked from home). Then a month to the day January 6, 2021 he had a Stroke. Keith spent a week in the hospital and came out of it with no serious side affects.
Overall, Keith's health has been not very good. I’m November 2021 his blood counts where constantly fluctuating between high / low . He was scheduled for a PET Scan which is when the Oncologist saw what he said was a shadow on his liver and turned out to be a tennis ball sized cancerous tumor (his now 4th different kind of cancer). For years Keith has been having a hard time breathing and getting around even room to room makes him faint and out of breath. I’ve called the paramedics twice in the past month alone because of him
passing out. The doctors sent us to USC to have a visit with the Keck Institute for cancer & a bone marrow doctor for his chronic fatigue & weakness.
Keith has had more IVs than we can count over the last year and has been expressing the pain and discomfort of being constantly stuck. His veins are so beat up they nurses can not find one the regular way. As a result, in late December 2021 the doctor agreed to have a port put in for when he starts chemo and for blood work. Keith has had heartbeat abnormalities for a year now, so he was sent to a Cardiologist who decided that he needed a pacemaker. His heart rate has a history of reaching as high as 160 BPM. Very Scary!!
So Keith started chemo again on Jan 20, 2022. He goes in one day for several hours of chemotherapy and then again the following day for fluids and a procret shot to help boost his red blood cells.
<3 So far his schedule will be chemo 2 weeks in a row with fluids and then one week off.
We went back to the cardiologist for a post op appt. and they had said that maybe Keith can have his liver cancer removal surgery in 6 weeks!
We really need help with everything. Keith is getting too weak to work and our son who is special needs lives at home with us full time and needs our care. Our medical bills for Keith are piling high and we will do everything we can to get him the care he needs. This kind of financial aid will make an incredibly positive impact on the stress we’re under as a family and can allow Keith to rest easy and recover. The sooner we can reach our goal, the sooner we can start paying off this hill of medical bills. Whatever you can do to help will be incredibly appreciated.