Jon & Trish Raymond Family Fund

I am setting up this Go Fund Me Account for Jon and Trish Raymond to help
them with both medical and living expenses. This week Jon was diagnosed
with Stage IV synovial sarcoma. He will be admitted Monday (3/28/16) to
have a Mediport placed and will begin a vigorous chemotherapy regimen.

A little information about Jon, Trish and their family:

Jon grew up in Mapleton, Maine and is very proud of his "County" roots. He
majored in music at the University of Southern Maine. His instrument and
love is trumpet. Jon met his wife Trish (Houy) at McDonalds, where they were
both employed at the time. They celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in
September of 2015. Jon and Trish are both Christians. Their belief in Jesus
Christ as their Savior has been the foundation for both their marriage and
for how they have chosen to raise their family. They have four wonderful
children.

Amanda (age 21): Jon passed his love of music to all of his children,
however for his oldest daughter Amanda, it became her passion. She is
following in her father's footsteps, majoring in music at USM. She currently
is an accomplished pianist, but also loves playing the violin.

Carter (age 17): Carter is currently a senior. He has also been taking
courses at York County Community College and hopes to major in law
enforcement, possibly to become a game warden. He loves sports, especially
basketball and he is an avid outdoorsman.

Amy (age 13) : Amy is in the 7th grade. She loves drama and dance. She
most recently was in a ballet interpretation of Cinderella.

Allison (age 10) : Alli is in the 5th grade. She also enjoys participating
in plays. Alli has also had some medical challenges over this past year. She
was diagnosed with Chronic Recurrent Multifocal Osteomyelitis, which is
being treated with a form of chemotherapy. She also has spent much of the
winter on crutches after fracturing her ankle in a sledding accident. She
has had one surgical repair and will require a second surgery in April for
hardware removal.

Jon and Trish have had many challenges in the last couple of years,
including the unexpected death of Jon's mother in June of 2014 and the death
of Trish's father this past fall. Trish's mother is currently in hospice
care and has a fractured hip that is unable to be repaired related to her
age. Trish also had knee surgery in January and is currently being evaluated
for possible autoimmune issues.

A brief history of Jon's illness:

This past fall, Jon began to notice blood in his urine. An evaluation
revealed that he had a very large mass on his left kidney as well as some
nodules in his lungs. Doctors felt the nodules in his lungs were too small
to biopsy so the plan was to monitor them closely. He had a left
nephrectomy (kidney removal) in November. The doctors were unable to
determine a definite diagnosis by pathology in Portland, so his pathology
slides were sent to Boston by the pathologists there. After over two weeks,
the Boston pathologists determined that Jon did not have renal(kidney)
cancer as previously thought. Instead he was given a diagnosis of a stromal
tumor with a rare condition called MEST. Jon recovered quickly from his
surgery and was beginning to feel better.

He had a 2 month follow up with more scans and a consultation with his
oncologist in January. There were a few new nodules present in Jon's lungs
that were not previously there in the fall. The decision was made for close
monitoring, which meant a repeat CT scan in 3 months. Unfortunately, Jon
was at his son's basketball game several weeks later when he started to
cough and raise blood. A CT scan was repeated and showed significant
changes from the CT that had been done 6 weeks previously. He had larger
masses present in both lungs and a mass had formed in the wound bed where
his kidney had previously been removed. The decision was made to do a CT
guided biopsy, with pathologies being sent to Boston for not only tissue
diagnosis, but for genetic testing as well.

Jon turned 50 on St. Patrick's day this year. He spent the morning at work
and met with his oncologist that evening to review the findings from his
biopsy. Unfortunately, Boston had not finished with his pathology report at
the time of this meeting. Jon had begun to experience abdominal swelling
and his oncologist ordered a CT of his abdomen. One week later, Jon met with
the oncologist again and was told that the cancer was again worse than the
previous CT a few weeks before. The diagnosis of synovial sarcoma was
given. The cancer was determined to be Stage IV and had spread through his
lungs and abdomen.

Treatment with chemotherapy is considered to be the best treatment at this
time. The oncologist was honest and told him that remission would be highly
unlikely. The chemo will make him extremely fatigued and every second week
his immune system will be severely compromised, so he is going to be
required to miss a lot of work. Jon used up all of his sick time with his
previous surgery and the human resources department at his place of
employment is checking to see if there will be a waiting period for him to
qualify for short term disability. He does not have long term disability.
I am asking that you please forward this on your Facebook pages. If you are
unable to donate, as a man of faith, he would welcome your prayers. Thank
you.