Please Help the Slack Family
This is one of my student's family. They are amazing and need help. Please give anything if you can.
From Ashley:
We are the Slack family. There are 7 of in total and we have lived in Cache Valley for a while now.
Ben has been diagnosed with a very rare type of sarcoma bone cancer. The cancer does not really have a name but it is classified as non-osteogenic high grade spindle cell sarcoma of the bone. It’s a very large tumor on the lower part of his leg which will require 5-6 rounds of chemo and he will still have to go through surgery and recovery. They will be replacing his bone with a rod to reinforce his leg.
From Bella:
They’re starting him on a 12 week High Potency Chemotherapy treatment. Right now it is largely in his leg and Liver, but spreading to the rest of his body. The Chemo is hopefully preventing any more spread so surgical removal can be made an option. He’ll receive high dosages of Chemo for 12 days, then he’ll be able to come home for 2 days of recovery. He’ll cycle through that 6 times, then they can consult for surgery.
He’s doing the Chemo through an IV, but it’s going to make him too sick to eat or drink anything. He is diabetic and has a history of kidney failure, so his risk factors are exponentially high. This leads them to believe it will end up taking longer than 12 weeks because if he experiences too many complications they will have to slow down the plan.
If he can complete the treatment and responds to it well, they’re hoping to surgically remove 9 inches of his lower leg and replace it with a metal rod. So ideally that would happen around October. And following the surgery, he’ll be bedridden for at least 3 months before he can start building function again. At that point they’ll reevaluate if more treatment is needed or if he will be heading into remission.
This is his X- ray so you can see his main tumor. He can’t walk on his own anymore so he uses crutches, because he only has about 20% of his bone structure left.
So we take him to start the beginning of his treatments, and for at least the next three months we get to see him every other weekend. Because of COVID, only 1 visitor over the age of 15 is allowed twice a week but we can’t touch him and we both have to wear a mask.
Everything was so slow getting started and then all of a sudden everything for the next 6 months has been planned out. He won’t be able to work, so he got with his boss this morning and is taking a furlough for a year. This way we’ll be able to just pay out of pocket to keep our insurance, but he won’t be able to make any money through that period. Upfront he feels terrible about it, but I think it’ll be really good for him to not have any stress about making time for work on days off of treatment or before surgery.
We don’t have hardly any time to prepare or adapt to everything that’s changing tomorrow, but we’re making the most of it. We had family over yesterday so he could say goodbye for the next little while. And this morning he asked us to cut his hair so he didn’t have to watch it fall out. Both of my brothers helped him and then cut their own.