Rob Henderson Wellness Assistance
Donation protected
Our Friend and Co-worker needs your help,
I'd like to take time to share a little story about our friend and coworker Rob Henderson. We all know him as Big Rob. We nicknamed him Big Rob because his managerial partner is also named Rob. Both are opposite and similar in many ways so we felt we needed something to distinguish them apart. And, well, as we all know, Rob's a big dude. But it wasn't long before we realized that the Big in "Big Rob" wasn't just his stature, but his big personality, big sense of humor, big energy, big lover of life, and most of all...a big heart. His kindness and compassion is as big as could be, and we love him for it.
Spend just a day with him and you'll know his life revolves around his wife Renee, his sons Jon and Jake and his grandkids Zoey and Zane. His life revolves around them. He lives a simple life with a love of nature, birds, and just working in his yard on a Sunday afternoon.
Big Rob is already a survivor from a battle with cancer in 2015, in which he not only kicked cancer's ass into remission, he beat a near death staph infection in his chest that took him within a few hours of sepsis and complete organ failure.
But during a routine follow-up in December of 2019, his worst fears returned. Cancer had shown it's ugly face again, and in a bad way. His scans showed that not only had it come back, but come back all over his body. Liver, spleen, lung, vertebrae, femur, dozens and dozens of lymph nodes and more. It looked bad enough that his local oncologist suggested he go to Chicago to a much bigger hospital. He immediately did just that and was able to meet with a Lymphoma specialist at Rush on Christmas Eve.
He has spent the most of 2020 driving up to Rush on his days off getting scans and tests as well as seven surgical biopsies to determine the exact type of lymphoma they were dealing with.
He received radiation on his right leg in the Spring in an attempt to alleviate the immense pain cancer on the bone causes. That worked, but only a temporary fix.
The problem is all the biopsies kept coming up "inconclusive" for any one definitive type of cancer while a few even came back negative. It was an extremely confusing and stressful summer for Rob and his family. Desperately needing answers and wanting to start treatment, knowing that the disease is growing and spreading in his body the whole time.
A few months ago his team suggested a partial lobectomy to biopsy a large mass in his lower right lung. So of course, he had the surgery to remove the lower lobe. Finally an answer! He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma and finally a treatment plan. He received targeted immunotherapy treatments for a little over two months with great success. The tumors on his femur and the two in his liver were completely GONE!!!
That's where the good news stops. While the scan showed the immunotherapy cured some areas, it completely ignored all the others and NEW spots showed up in the lung. The epitome of one step forward and two steps back.
Back under the knife for a second lung surgery in under 90 days to remove two of the new spots and a glimpse of good news as those spots were not cancer, but a rare condition called Organizing pneumonia, a side effect of the immunotherapy treatments. So what's the deal? What's going on here? Turns out, while not common, Rob had Hodgkin's lymphoma AND Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma at the same time! Not ideal for sure.
New game plan. A couple months of strong chemotherapy followed up stem cell transplant, otherwise known as a bone marrow transplant. He will have to spend three weeks in the hospital, getting literally the strongest chemo there is, completely annihilating his entire body and then slowly getting the transplant to build him back up. Complete isolation for three weeks. And if that doesn't sound fun enough, when discharged, he must go directly to one of the hospital's certified "clean" hotels for another two weeks of complete quarantine. I can't even imagine being stuck in a hotel room for a couple of days without being able to even leave the room, let alone two full weeks. And once home, he may have to remain under "house arrest" due to covid-19.
He has already been warned, this will undoubtedly be the hardest five weeks of his life, but necessary for his life.
This is where he and his family need your help. He has already missed a month of work earlier in the year for radiation therapy and now has been quarantined at home since chemo started in mid November and based on my conversation with him the other day, looks like he won't be able to come back to work until the end of March at the soonest. His body's ability to fight off infection is almost completely gone. On his blood work report, one of the numbers that would be low at 18 and has a normal range up to 54, his is two, yes, two!
Meaning even a common cold or a simple papercut can be very problematic. And with covid-19 looming, there's no way he can even risk leaving the house.
It can be a financial hardship for some folks to miss a few days or weeks of work, but to not be able to work for five months or more, while still paying for health insurance is more than anyone should have to worry about. The human body can have many enemies while fighting cancer, but stress can literally be a killer. We don't want that for Rob. We just can't have him worrying about his car payment, mortgage and all his bills while fighting for his life. You only get one chance at this, and his focus needs to be on the fight and remission.
One thing about Rob is that he never wanted anyone to feel uncomfortable about his diagnosis. He has been very good at explaining what is going on and to treat him the same as everyone else, just with a mask and six feet away of course. He is also the one that started GoFundMe pages for several of our employees that were dealing with medical or financial hardships, so now it's our turn to help him.
Health insurance only covers so much and between the deductible, co-pays, hotel stays and the expenses of commuting up to Rush well over 50 times in the last year, he has already racked up thousands in bills, which combined with five months of no work and with a new year, starts a new deductible as well. Where does it end?
Please, help our friend in his time of need. Regardless of the amount, every dollar helps reduce his accumulating stack of bills that just keeps growing.
Thank you deeply for reading this and if his story touches your heart, please give what you can. Your generosity is so much appreciated.
I'd like to take time to share a little story about our friend and coworker Rob Henderson. We all know him as Big Rob. We nicknamed him Big Rob because his managerial partner is also named Rob. Both are opposite and similar in many ways so we felt we needed something to distinguish them apart. And, well, as we all know, Rob's a big dude. But it wasn't long before we realized that the Big in "Big Rob" wasn't just his stature, but his big personality, big sense of humor, big energy, big lover of life, and most of all...a big heart. His kindness and compassion is as big as could be, and we love him for it.
Spend just a day with him and you'll know his life revolves around his wife Renee, his sons Jon and Jake and his grandkids Zoey and Zane. His life revolves around them. He lives a simple life with a love of nature, birds, and just working in his yard on a Sunday afternoon.
Big Rob is already a survivor from a battle with cancer in 2015, in which he not only kicked cancer's ass into remission, he beat a near death staph infection in his chest that took him within a few hours of sepsis and complete organ failure.
But during a routine follow-up in December of 2019, his worst fears returned. Cancer had shown it's ugly face again, and in a bad way. His scans showed that not only had it come back, but come back all over his body. Liver, spleen, lung, vertebrae, femur, dozens and dozens of lymph nodes and more. It looked bad enough that his local oncologist suggested he go to Chicago to a much bigger hospital. He immediately did just that and was able to meet with a Lymphoma specialist at Rush on Christmas Eve.
He has spent the most of 2020 driving up to Rush on his days off getting scans and tests as well as seven surgical biopsies to determine the exact type of lymphoma they were dealing with.
He received radiation on his right leg in the Spring in an attempt to alleviate the immense pain cancer on the bone causes. That worked, but only a temporary fix.
The problem is all the biopsies kept coming up "inconclusive" for any one definitive type of cancer while a few even came back negative. It was an extremely confusing and stressful summer for Rob and his family. Desperately needing answers and wanting to start treatment, knowing that the disease is growing and spreading in his body the whole time.
A few months ago his team suggested a partial lobectomy to biopsy a large mass in his lower right lung. So of course, he had the surgery to remove the lower lobe. Finally an answer! He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma and finally a treatment plan. He received targeted immunotherapy treatments for a little over two months with great success. The tumors on his femur and the two in his liver were completely GONE!!!
That's where the good news stops. While the scan showed the immunotherapy cured some areas, it completely ignored all the others and NEW spots showed up in the lung. The epitome of one step forward and two steps back.
Back under the knife for a second lung surgery in under 90 days to remove two of the new spots and a glimpse of good news as those spots were not cancer, but a rare condition called Organizing pneumonia, a side effect of the immunotherapy treatments. So what's the deal? What's going on here? Turns out, while not common, Rob had Hodgkin's lymphoma AND Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma at the same time! Not ideal for sure.
New game plan. A couple months of strong chemotherapy followed up stem cell transplant, otherwise known as a bone marrow transplant. He will have to spend three weeks in the hospital, getting literally the strongest chemo there is, completely annihilating his entire body and then slowly getting the transplant to build him back up. Complete isolation for three weeks. And if that doesn't sound fun enough, when discharged, he must go directly to one of the hospital's certified "clean" hotels for another two weeks of complete quarantine. I can't even imagine being stuck in a hotel room for a couple of days without being able to even leave the room, let alone two full weeks. And once home, he may have to remain under "house arrest" due to covid-19.
He has already been warned, this will undoubtedly be the hardest five weeks of his life, but necessary for his life.
This is where he and his family need your help. He has already missed a month of work earlier in the year for radiation therapy and now has been quarantined at home since chemo started in mid November and based on my conversation with him the other day, looks like he won't be able to come back to work until the end of March at the soonest. His body's ability to fight off infection is almost completely gone. On his blood work report, one of the numbers that would be low at 18 and has a normal range up to 54, his is two, yes, two!
Meaning even a common cold or a simple papercut can be very problematic. And with covid-19 looming, there's no way he can even risk leaving the house.
It can be a financial hardship for some folks to miss a few days or weeks of work, but to not be able to work for five months or more, while still paying for health insurance is more than anyone should have to worry about. The human body can have many enemies while fighting cancer, but stress can literally be a killer. We don't want that for Rob. We just can't have him worrying about his car payment, mortgage and all his bills while fighting for his life. You only get one chance at this, and his focus needs to be on the fight and remission.
One thing about Rob is that he never wanted anyone to feel uncomfortable about his diagnosis. He has been very good at explaining what is going on and to treat him the same as everyone else, just with a mask and six feet away of course. He is also the one that started GoFundMe pages for several of our employees that were dealing with medical or financial hardships, so now it's our turn to help him.
Health insurance only covers so much and between the deductible, co-pays, hotel stays and the expenses of commuting up to Rush well over 50 times in the last year, he has already racked up thousands in bills, which combined with five months of no work and with a new year, starts a new deductible as well. Where does it end?
Please, help our friend in his time of need. Regardless of the amount, every dollar helps reduce his accumulating stack of bills that just keeps growing.
Thank you deeply for reading this and if his story touches your heart, please give what you can. Your generosity is so much appreciated.
Organizer and beneficiary
Tom Dow and Friends help Rob Henderson
Organizer
Valparaiso, IN
Robert Henderson
Beneficiary