This is Eileen. She is the love of my life. I still can’t believe we’ll have been together 19 years this May. She is also the mother of our nine-year-old son Ronan and seven-year-old daughter Maeve, two children who are more amazing than anything their parents could have hoped for when they decided to start a family. Eileen is the toughest person I, and now you, will ever know.

In February of 2024, Eileen was diagnosed with an extremely rare type of cancer known as low-grade fibromyxoid sarcoma (LGFMS) or “Evan’s Tumor.” Discovered in 1987, it is a slow-growing metastatic cancer that usually starts as a small painless bump in the arm or leg during adolescence and will eventually metastasize to the lungs if not removed in time. It grows extremely slowly, so chemotherapy and radiation have little to no effect on it. The preferred treatment is always surgical removal.

As a teenager, Eileen had a small lump removed from her inner thigh that was diagnosed at the time as a benign “spindle cell sarcoma.” As a result, there was no indication any follow-up was necessary and so, sporting a gnarly scar now forever known as her “shark bite,” Eileen got on with her life.

Eileen has always been “the healthy one.” I can count on one hand how many times I’ve even seen her drink. She’s never smoked anything in her life. She feels bad when she doesn’t eat enough green things in a week. She was an avid cyclist, swimmer, lover of the outdoors, and all-around athlete. She conceived and delivered two children with almost no issues. For two decades, she gave doctors zero reason to ever look inside her chest.

In early 2024, Eileen visited her GP after suffering from months of issues swallowing and inexplicable heartburn. He ordered imaging and within the week we learned the truth: the tumor in Eileen’s leg when she was a teen had, in fact, been LGFMS and it had metastasized to her lungs where it had been growing unnoticed for 20 years. By the time she was diagnosed, 60% of her left lung was already gone and her right lung contained five pencil-eraser-sized tumors as well.

29 days after that first visit to her GP, the top cardiothoracic surgeon in the area removed her entire left lung along with two 4-inch sections of her ribs. The whole experience from symptoms to surgery happened so quickly it felt more like she had been in a car accident than diagnosed with stage four cancer.

After removing her lung, the decision was made to spare Eileen additional surgery for the time being and instead monitor the remaining tumors and only act if necessary. This was also the point at which the doctor started using terminology like “giving you as many years as we can.”

The gravity of Eileen's condition was always clear to me. As soon as she had been diagnosed, I made it clear in no uncertain terms that any way she wanted to respond to this was on the table. I and the children would be right beside her whatever she decided she wanted to do with her life now. There was no mortgage that was more important than her time with her family, no savings that was for anything more crucial than this. Yet to everyone’s shock (most importantly my own), three weeks after her surgery, Eileen decided to go back to her job as a pediatric nurse.

Eileen’s primary concern from the moment of her diagnosis had always been the impact it would have on the children. There was every reason to believe it may be another 10 years before the other tumors grew appreciably. We had a family to care for. The kids were so young. They needed stability, not to have everything they’ve known uprooted overnight. She was determined to do everything she could to get things as back to normal for the children as possible, even if that meant spending 10 hours a day struggling to breathe through a mask with only one lung and a ribcage that caused her constant pain.

While she stayed employed for an entire year after her initial surgery, Eileen retired from nursing in February of 2025 when it became obvious after a bad bout of the flu she likely picked up on the job that she simply couldn’t continue working any longer because of such risks.

With the future of our young family now uncertain, we decided to homeschool the kids so they could spend as much time with their mother as possible. We learned to live scan to scan and have spent the last year completely reorganizing our lives to give Ro and Maeve the most time with Eileen possible and the best shot at a normal childhood, even as her diagnosis now cast a shadow over everything we did.

As of her scan this January, a new tumor has appeared in Eileen’s remaining lung that was not on her previous scans. While her existing tumors have shown almost no growth in the past two years, this new tumor has grown much more rapidly than is typical of her type of cancer and her surgeon was immediately keen to remove it.

Because Eileen has only the one remaining lung, every inch of healthy lung tissue is precious. Normal laparoscopic surgery gives the surgeon limited room to work with and so they often end up taking more tissue than might be necessary, tissue Eileen can’t afford to lose. As a result, her surgeon proposed another radical surgery which will involve making a much larger incision between her ribs that he can spread open, giving him room to access the entire lung and more precisely remove only the bad tissue while sparing the maximum amount of healthy lung in the process.

Additionally, the surgeon will be operating on the only lung Eileen has left to breathe with and a heart-lung bypass machine is not an option in this case. In order to do this, the anesthesiologist will shut off Eileen’s air supply temporarily while the surgeon works as quickly as he can in a given area before the oxygen deprivation starts to damage her brain. Once he’s finished, the anesthesiologist will then restore her air supply until her oxygen level stabilizes.

They will repeat the process as many times as necessary. She will be the only patient he operates on that day. I cannot emphasize how valuable this man’s time is; this detail above all others conveyed the gravity of the procedure she is facing.

We were extremely fortunate that we were able to keep things relatively stable for the kids during Eileen’s first operation because of her indomitable spirit that first year and how quickly she returned to work, but things are obviously different this time. I also know the world is, frankly, a dumpster fire, and that many people are in situations even worse than our own. I did not post this lightly, but I am posting it. Growing up, my mother made it absolutely clear to me that there was nothing she wouldn’t do for her children and I am here today and able to do the same for my own because of her. Eileen’s primary concern always has been, and always will be, Ronan and Maeve’s future and emotional well-being. Anything donated to this fund will go directly towards providing them with as much stability, normality, and quality time with Eileen as possible.

Whoever you are: if you read this far - I love you (this was very hard to write). Whether I know you or not, whether you donate anything or not, I’m grateful you’re here because if nothing else there’s now one more person out there who knows a little bit about how incredible kick-ass Eileen is. Go hug someone who is as irreplaceable to you as she is to me.

And if you’re in your mid-30s or older and have never had a chest x-ray, on behalf of everyone who loves you: get someone to give you one!

Love,

Mike, Eileen, Ronan, and Maeve