Help Rachel Beat Cancer

Jon here, Rachel's husband. There's no easy way to say this: Rachel has cancer, a rare type called chondrosarcoma. She's going to need a pretty specialized surgery that will involve living out of state temporarily and a long recovery process. But we are clinging to the hope that once the surgery is complete, she will be cancer-free and focus on recovery.

She has had an irregular bone/cartilage growth called osteochondroma on her right femur since childhood. She had surgery when she was 14 to remove and biopsy part of it. It was benign at the time. The doctor who operated on it back then is still in practice (thank god!) at Vanderbilt in Nashville and one of the best in the country. When we lived in Nashville again recently, Rachel decided to get a followup MRI to check on it. Rarely, they can change course and turn malignant. That was 2019 and there were no notable issues.

This year, Rachel scheduled a followup for over Christmas while we were going to be in Nashville so we could compare and make sure everything was still okay. She had been feeling like things were different over the last year. It was hard to tell, because after having a child her body was different. Add to that for many years Rachel has struggled with accepting her "weird bone growth" and just tried to ignore it to make life a little easier, so she didn't have much to compare it to with the new tightness and soreness she was feeling around her thigh.

It turns out her intuition was right. On December 29, we found out that it has, in fact, grown and is cancerous. They immediately did an x-ray on her lungs because apparently this kind of cancer likes to jump there first. She was terrified, as she lost her mom to lung cancer a couple of years ago. Thankfully her lungs are clear and we have no reason to believe it has traveled outside the bone mass so far.

What’s next: She needs surgery to remove about 6-8 inches of her femur that the growth is on. Then, that will be replaced with a donor femur, grafted and held in place with a metal rod. The best place for her to do this is Nashville due to the specialist who is most qualified to perform the surgery, coupled with her existing support system there as the majority of her family is there. Right now, we are waiting to figure out our new insurance as I am starting a new job with the forestry department of the federal gov. on January 16.

Our focus right now is selecting the best insurance for Rachel's situation. Once we have the insurance active, we will be scheduling surgery and are hopeful we can get that done ASAP, as our greatest concern right now is getting the bone mass out so the cancer cannot spread. Our hope is surgery can take place before the end of February. Recovery will be many months long and we will need a lot of help. There are a lot of unknowns right now, like when she will be able to walk again, drive again, pick up our 2-year-old daughter Juniper, walk up the stairs to our house, etc etc. Rachel also runs two businesses and employs two women in our community, and we are also trying to figure out how to keep these going while she is recovering. She has been the primary caretaker for our daughter when she is not in daycare a few days a week, she has always been very active and used to doing many things on her own to keep our family together and her businesses operating. Right now we know she can probably never run again, which used to be her favorite physical activity, but we are hopeful she will be able to do other things she loves like bike, hike, and maybe cross country ski.

As you can imagine, this is going to be expensive, and money is unfortunately our greatest roadblock at this point. The insurance we have to get to cover this has a premium 10x that of what we've been paying for health insurance. Bluntly, we cannot afford this. The deductible/max out of pocket is near $20,000. We will also have travel expenses, childcare expenses, and we are still figuring out how Jon can be there for at least part of the surgery with starting a new job and it being hundreds of miles from home.

We never wanted to be here - cancer is one thing, and having to ask for help in this way is another. But we know we cannot do this alone, and aside from financial help, we will need all the emotional support we can get. We will be donating any excess amount we receive through this fundraiser to CORE Community Resources, a nonprofit in our town of Bayfield, WI that helps reduce hunger in our county and improve the quality of life for seniors. They do amazing work and are much-needed in our area.

This goes a long way in helping us figure everything and we are so, so thankful to have so many friends and family who have already pledged their time and energy. Thank you! We love you all and if you pray, we could use that too :)