Support Troy's Fight Against Brain Cancer

Thank you for visiting our page! These recent days have felt like the most intense, emotional, and most truly inspirational days our family could experience. Dad has been absolutely surrounded with love from friends and family since his game changing diagnosis. For those of you who haven’t heard, his pathology findings have come back as high grade glioblastoma, which is the fastest growing and most aggressive form of brain cancer.

Amongst the myriad of stressors vying for his attention, financial stress is certainly a contender. As happy as dad has been to celebrate an early retirement, it didn’t exactly happen on his planned timeline. So with this in mind, the man who has lived his life with a spirit of helping others has agreed to let me ask for a little help on his behalf! If you’d like to help, your heartfelt donations will go toward lightening the load for Dad and Maria in the weeks and months to come. We are thinking of the necessities like medical expenses and equipment not otherwise covered. Possibly housing improvements. In a perfect world, we would also love to make it easier to create meaningful memories with whatever time Dad has left (and we’re all still hoping for a good long time :) Maybe we can fund some bucket list items and reasonable traveling adventures.

Troy’s story:

Two weeks ago, Dad was living his best Cali life, biking to work every day, and planning his next long distance races (the Napa 100 mile century ride and the Seattle to Portland in July.) But things don’t always go to plan. What started as some isolated instances of stumbling and fatigue progressed to significant left sided weakness in a matter of days. Dad ended up in the ER at Stanford fully expecting to hear about nerve impingement, or some other musculoskeletal issue. But the doctor instead reported his CT scan showed a sizable mass in his right frontal parietal region.

Since that diagnosis, it seems that every day has brought a new development. Initial scans placed the tumor in an inoperable location, deep within the motor function regions of the brain. Dad had a biopsy last week to determine the type of cancer we’re facing, and to help in formulating next steps. We had planned to spend the following week awaiting pathology results with family, and even had a Disney trip on the books! Instead, Dad had an unexpected and significant increase of left sided weakness a few days post-biopsy. We returned to Stanford hospital where a new CT scan showed bleeding at the tumor site.

The new bleeding and loss of movement on his left side changed our surgical options. Faced with an extremely difficult decision, Dad elected to have surgery on the tumor, risking even more severe loss of motor function in hope of removing a newly formed blood clot and portion of the tumor itself.

Next, we received our first instance of good news since day one; the surgery was a categorical success! Dads neurosurgeon, Dr. Li, was able to remove all of the clot and a significant section of the tumor with no apparent worsening of function.

As of this writing, we have received pathology results indicating a high grade glioblastoma. Dad is recovering from surgery and getting stronger every day, focusing on retraining his neuro pathways to aid in walking and recovering left sided function. He’ll be spending dedicated time in a rehab facility before discharging home. We are currently looking at a small window of time (3-4 weeks) before chemotherapy and radiation can begin, to allow for full healing of his surgical site.

We know very well by now to take each day as it comes. But before his treatment begins… We may try again to make it to Disneyland, where he looks forward to spending time with his children and grandchildren.

Dad has cherished every moment working with his coworkers at Stanford. Leading with sincere faith and the unwavering support of his many friends and family, we are all hoping for the best possible outcome.