Please help support Courtney in her journey to fight cancer

                      ***UPDATE*** 

As I update this, our beautiful Courtney has now had 2 Grand Mal seizures and is sedated on a ventilator in the Neuro ICU at Cleveland Clinic. She once again will have radiation to her brain and be there for weeks. *** PLEASE PRAY... MIRACLES DO HAPPEN     Courtney’s Story:

My journey with cancer started in November 2020. I got a call from my dermatologist after having a small mole removed from my left thigh. I had Melanoma. I knew from their sense of urgency that this wasn’t “just” skin cancer. I was immediately referred to a care team at the Cleveland Clinic and surgery was promptly performed to remove the tumor. On December 1st I got the call that the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes meaning I was officially stage III. I was just 30 years old. I spent all of 2021 driving back and forth to Cleveland for treatment, scans, and skin checks and by the end of the year I was officially in remission. I almost felt guilty even referring to myself as a cancer patient because life went on relatively unchanged, however just a few short years later everything would change.

2023 was without question the best year of my life. I watched my beautiful sister marry the love of her life and just a couple months later it was my turn to marry the love of mine. And on November 2, 2023, he and I welcomed the most beautiful baby boy into the world. I never knew I could experience such love and happiness. During my pregnancy my three-month scans were put on hold to protect the baby and were set to resume on November 22. I remember being very calm going into them, assuming everything would still be all clear but instead they found nodules growing in my lungs. I had a PET/CT ordered as well as a lung biopsy and both came back positive for metastatic disease. I’ll never forget being home alone feeding my son in his nursery when I got the results. Everything on me went numb. I put him in his crib and started frantically calling my husband and family. I just kept sobbing and screaming into the phone “I’m not going to see him turn one! My baby won’t even know who I am!” My family rallied around me and tried their best to remain positive, but the worst was yet to come.

Now a stage IV Melanoma patient, the plan was another round of immunotherapy. I had my first infusion of Keytruda January 16th and by the 18th I was bedridden from what I believed at the time to be side effects. Extreme fatigue, nausea, severe muscle aches, but what wasn’t making sense was the bruising. The whole trunk of my body as well as my arms were starting to get covered in dark, painful bruises all of which were accompanied by hard nodules under the skin. Eventually one started forming in my right eye until the whole eye looked black. I couldn’t walk the couple of steps it took to get from my bed to my bathroom without fainting. Eventually it got to the point where we had no choice but to drive up to the Cleveland Clinic Emergency Room. I don’t remember a whole lot about the first few days there. My hemoglobin had dropped so low I had to have multiple blood transfusions. New scans showed hundreds of subcutaneous tumors throughout my upper body. Tumors were also found in my brain, liver, adrenal glands, ovaries, spine, and eye in addition to the tumors in the lungs. My poor husband watched his new bride and mother of his child quickly slipping away. My parents prepared to bury their daughter. It was truly a nightmare scenario.

My oncologist immediately started me on oral chemo pills that target rare and aggressive melanomas like mine. Thankfully, within a few days I started slowly coming back to life until I was eventually released on February 13. My new treatment plan consists of continued immunotherapy every three weeks, along with daily chemo pills plus rounds of radiation all of which come with debilitating side effects. I had twenty days with my son.

To say this has been challenging is an understatement but it hasn’t been made any easier with the ever-growing medical bills. To give some insight, the uninsured cost of the chemo pills alone is around $45k…PER MONTH! One scan can be a few grand and I get them multiple times a month right now and one round of brain radiation costs around $30k. This doesn’t include prescription costs or office visits. Not to mention travel costs since we live about an hour and a half from the Clinic. Thankfully I have been approved for disability benefits, but they don’t come close to covering my expenses leaving most of the financial burden on my self-employed husband, who is losing money from taking time off work to care for me and our son. I know so many people say they feel funny asking for help, but I truly have so much anxiety around it anyone who knows me knows typing this is a challenge, but our new little family is truly struggling and could use all the help we can get. Money is not something any cancer patient should have to worry about but until that time comes, words can’t express how grateful I would be for any help you can extend to our family at this time. Thank you for being a part of my fight.

— Courtney Ianazone