My name is Andy McGuire, and 2 months ago my wife Desirae went to the hospital for what we thought were kidney stones. They quickly realized that the issue was with the pancreas, not the kidney, and they needed to put a stint in her bile duct to relieve her pain. This involved a procedure they didn't perform in Longview, and she was transferred to OHSU in Portland.

Which is also where they found signs that she had been experiencing chronic pancreatitis for years, as well as a mass in the pancreas. Only a few days later, my 46 year old wife was diagnosed with early stage pancreatic cancer. They caught it early, and we have her doctor who listened to her concerns to thank for that. For almost 20 years, we had been going to emergency rooms and doctors who basically called her crazy, eventually leading us to believe it was a gall bladder issue. They remove the gall bladder, and the pain continues to come back. She dealt with it silently, no longer wanting to deal with doctors that call her crazy. Finally her doctor with Cowlitz Public Health listened. With an aggressive cancer like this, catching it this early is what we're calling "the best case of the worst case."

Now she's about a month post-op from a Whipple procedure to remove the cancer. Turns out not even that put a stop to the pancreatitis, and now she gets to try to heal from major abdominal surgery with that. The plan was always for chemo afterwards anyway, but the scans after her surgery showed that the cancer has now spread to the lymph nodes, making starting the chemo immediately even more pressing.

Because the surgery was so intense, she required around the clock care for at least 4 weeks post-hospital. I stayed with her when I could, and her mother came down to help out as well so she could spend time with Desirae and I could get back to work. That was unfortunately short-lived, as I got into an accident and broke my hand. Then I was also needing surgery, and they've now put a pin in my scaphoid, saying the soonest I'll be able to get back to work is the end of July.

So now we come to this. This is very uncomfortable, but at this point several people have asked us about it, so I guess it's worth a shot. Neither of us have really been able to work for the last couple of months, and we've been trying to get by on our own, but now we're almost a month late with rent and facing eviction. 2 of our adult children having been living with us for some time now, but are unable to find work, and now our oldest has moved home to help out, but is looking for work as well.

Moving forward, the doctors say she'll be able to work extremely part time in the next couple weeks, but not looking well for more than part time until chemo is done in 6 months. We are lucky that her employer has been extremely gracious with us, and she can keep working. I'll be back to work in a month or so, but I make significantly less, as we moved to Kelso to be close to her job, and I'm just starting out in my field as a forestry tech (I had to leave my career as a pastry chef having developed a severe allergy to airborne wheat, hospitalizing me multiple times), and haven't even been able to finish school yet.

We're crossing our fingers on this one, because it's going to be a long road until we get through this. Every bit helps, and we thank you for any support that can be offered. Even if you can't help, just sharing this post can help get the message out. She is extremely strong, and I know she can beat this with all of us behind her.