Support Bridgette's Battle Against Cancer

Bridgette Oliver was born and raised on the Southside. She attended St. Christina and St. John Fisher grammar school and Mother McAuley High School. She is the loving daughter of Mike, retired CFD and Colleen, a retired nurse. She is the protective older sister of Ryan, Cara and Laura. But Bridgette’s favorite role is being the most awesome Mom to Tyler and Layla.

In 2019, Bridgette was diagnosed with stage 3c Cervical cancer that spread to her lymph nodes. She underwent a radical hysterectomy along with 28 rounds of external radiation, 6 rounds of chemotherapy and 4 rounds of brachytherapy. After she was told that she was in remission, Bridgette had to have multiple procedures on her kidneys due to complications from her cancer surgery and treatments. In one of her scans following up on pain thought to be from her kidney, the Doctors found 2 masses. Bridgette had to go back the oncologist, only to find that her cancer returned in her left pelvis and her retro peritoneum in front of her L4 vertebrae.

Bridgette started treatment again in March of 2023 and has been in treatment for over a year now. She has had to undergo 3 consecutive lines of treatment, all of which have failed. In April 2024 she received results from her PET scan that the Tivdak treatments were not working. Bridgette’s cancer continued to grow and spread. Her oncologist at Rush recommended a couple options. She could try yet another chemo that would have a 20% chance of working or a trial at the University of Chicago that would give her a slightly better outcome of 27%. She has been told that she has limited options at this point and told that if her treatment doesn’t work she will have about 18 months left.

Bridgette was lucky enough that she found another trial through her Uncle Bill that sounds more promising. She is currently undergoing screening processes for a trial at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. This trial is expected to be extremely challenging and with cutting edge science that could potentially save her life. The treatment plan will be extracting T-cells from her blood and genetically modifying them in their lab. Then, after a couple immunosuppressive chemo treatments, inject them into her. Afterwards, she will have as many rounds of another type of chemotherapy as her body can handle. She will have to live in the hospital so she can be medically monitored during this process. This is a high risk- high reward procedure. There will be a lot of medical, travel, lodging and every day expenses associated with the next 6 months of her life.

The cost of to save Bridgette’s life is high and her family and friends are hoping to raise $50,000 to take the financial worries off her plate and help her focus on healing. Along with the financial concerns, her main focus is her kids:

“I don’t think I have ever been more scared in my life. However, I will NEVER stop fighting. There’s just never going to be enough time to love my children. No matter how old they get they will always be MY babies and I will ALWAYS fight to love them for as long as possible. I’m not sure about much and I definitely don’t have the answers to lots of things but I do know that the love I have for my children is the driving force behind my strength in this battle. I will always go big for them and I will always be all in when it comes to them.”

If you are able to support her, it would be greatly appreciated! Please keep this strong, sassy, brave woman in your prayers.