Support Madison's Fight Against A Rare And Aggressive Cancer

My 29-year-old daughter Madison Gervais was throwing up what looked like coffee grounds on June 30, 2024. I took her to the ER, and they suspected she had a bleeding ulcer and had an EGD done on July 1, 2024. All that was found was the bleeding ulcer, and the bleeding was stopped. She continued to deal with nausea and some vomiting. On Sept 4, 2024, she had another internal bleed. This time during the EGD, they found a 3.5cm tumor in her stomach that was bleeding. Biopsies were taken. She had lost half her volume of blood and needed a transfusion. She had to quit working her job as a preschool teacher due to the continuous nausea, vomiting, and shortness of breath. On Oct 1, 2024, she again threw up coffee ground (blood). I drove her to the University of Utah ER in SLC, which is close to a 4-hour drive from our house. They admitted her to ICU that night, and the next day, Oct 2, 2024, they did another EGD. They found that the tumor had grown from 3.5cm to 6.8cm in 27 days. The biopsy came back that it was high-grade malignant neoplasm, but they have not been able to find out the exact type of cancer, e.g., carcinoma, sarcoma, and such, as the tumor was so aggressive and mutated that they are not able to tell. On Oct 3, 2024, they went ahead and did an embolization to stop the flow of blood to the tumor. There are 5 different department heads at the Huntsman Cancer Hospital working together with outside resources to try and figure out what this rare and aggressive cancer is so that they know what type of chemotherapy to throw at it; however, it has all of them and the pathologists stumped. After lots of consultations and debating, they decided the best course of action while they wait was to go ahead and do a subtotal gastrectomy with a Roux-en-Y reconstruction. This means they removed 80% of her lower stomach and rerouted her intestines to her now smaller stomach. It is similar to when someone has a gastric band done, but this was done for someone who is only 107 lbs. She had that done on Oct 8, 2024, which was her 30th birthday. They chose to do that since the tumor was very aggressive as it was and didn’t want to risk it growing more or spreading while they wait on the pathologists to figure it out. In the meantime, during the PET scan, there was a small spot on her thyroid which glowed, so they did a fine needle aspiration and discovered she also has papillary thyroid cancer. Thankfully, that one is very small and one of the easiest thyroid cancers to treat. They do feel that these are two separate cancers and NOT related at all. In the 4 days since her stomach surgery, she has continued vomiting when trying to drink anything. They have her on a liquid-only diet along with a feeding tube inserted. So far, she is not progressing as well as they would like her to be. It is now the 12th day in the hospital, and no release is in sight yet. She will need to heal and get healthy before they can start any type of chemotherapy as she is pretty malnourished from not keeping much down for the past month.

She will continue to be out of work for a few months. Madison is a single mom with an 18-month-old daughter.

If you can help even with the smallest amount to help Madison to be able to pay her bills each month and be able to help Skylar with the things she needs like diapers, wipes, and food, that would be greatly appreciated. With the long distance between home and the cancer hospital, gas is pretty expensive, and the daily cost for meals while I am staying here at the hospital is really adding up. We do not know what the long term out come will be for prognosis. They are requesting a genetic testing to be done to see if there are any type of genetic mutations that may be causing this. But that will take a bit to get the results back.