[Exhausted Oscar Isaac voice] Somehow, cancer returned.

It’s unfortunate to be back in this situation but here we are. In June of this year I noticed a lump on my neck. Doing the responsible thing, I got it checked out and three images and a surgery later, the worst was confirmed. Symptoms are minimal; things are still pretty early in the overall progression. I do have a treatment plan now which will take place in several steps over the next several months (special thanks to my wonderful fiancee Triana for making sense to me of what the doctors are saying).

First up is six cycles (12 weeks) of immunotherapy, broken up by PET scans to see how effective it is. The hope is that the immunotherapy unlocks my immune system so that it starts to fight instead of sitting idly by. While this is a fairly lengthy process, it’s mostly non-disruptive. Side effects are minimal and I’ll mostly be able to go about living normally. The infusions themselves will only take a total of about an hour and a half (as opposed to 4+ hours of chemotherapy). When these six rounds are done, they’ll do imaging to gauge how effective it was. If there was a significant response, I would be able to skip step two and go right on to step three.

If the response wasn’t significant enough or there was no response at all, I would receive a heavy dose of a very old fashioned version of chemotherapy called “ICE”. ICE is far more intense than the chemo used now, and will require a hospital stay at Johns Hopkins while I’m undergoing it and I have to imagine won’t feel good.

This is all to build up to a stem cell autotransplant. This involves, in broad terms, extracting stem cells, nuking my immune system with more chemo, and then putting the stem cells back in so that my body can rebuild its immune system, hopefully in such a way that it’s not creating cancer cells this time. It’s a lot lower risk than getting the transplant from someone else at the cost of lowered effectiveness. Following this, it’s another hospital stay for at least a couple of weeks, followed by a stay at a hotel near the hospital for a couple of weeks. Once I've recovered a bit, I can move back home although with a new immune system I’ll still have to isolate for a few months, during which time I’ll be unable to work or otherwise live like a normal person.

This is all to say that we need help. Between medical expenses, hotel stays, travel expenses, and several months of reduced income to pay bills, it’ll be a tough couple of months. In addition to money, we also have an Amazon wishlist of items that will help both with staying healthy and helping me keep my sanity stuck in a hospital. We would appreciate any assistance that can be provided, financial or otherwise. Thank you all very much.