Rob's Cancer Fund

As some of you may know, my brother has been diagnosed with cancer. He has tonsil cancer as well as cancer in his lymph nodes or “throat & neck cancer”. Last October he went in for an ultrasound on a couple of lumps he had on his neck. One that never grew and one that had been growing at a slow pace. The ultrasound resulted in a biopsy which concluded abnormal malignant cells. We found this out a week before Christmas. Rob went in for a PET scan and he and my niece spent a week at Porter with every cancer doctor in there it seemed. My brother has two options. He can have surgery to remove them and then follow up with radiation and potentially chemo afterwards depending on the pathology results. The downfall would be that he has a risk of not being able to fully talk or swallow afterwards. Because he has multiple (5) lymph nodes that need removed in the neck/throat region, they are all connected to something. The surgical doctor would be taking a portion of his tongue and throat out that could drastically affect his speech  and so forth which could result in him not being able to speak or swallow properly afterwards. And as many of you know him, my brother is a talker! It also could affect the use of his left arm. The second treatment option Rob has is to do radiation and chemo together with no surgery. Within the first couple of weeks they will know if this option is going to be effective. Rob has opted for this option because he doesn’t want to risk his voice knowing that he will also still have to potentially have radiation and chemo anyway. Rob goes in tomorrow to have his mask made for Radiation. He will have radiation treatment 5 days a week for 6-7 weeks and chemo once a week. Radiation will be about 30 min and chemo will be about 3 1/2 hours. Rob just had all of his teeth removed 2 weeks ago to get ready for treatment. He will be without teeth for the next 3-4 months while in treatment and about a month after until his gums and jaw bone heal.  Then they will be able to fit him for dentures.

If anyone knows my brother, he is the most selfless and caring man I know. He wakes up every day just to try and provide for his terminally ill son. We’ve had family meetings, phone conversations, restless nights, endless amounts of worries on what we are going to do financially, emotionally and physically to provide for him and his son. My goal is to help raise some money for him to be able to pay his rent, food, bills and any other expenses he has while he goes through treatment. No one will know what to expect when he goes through this and the last worry I want him to have is a financial worry. If you can’t help financially, I pray you help spiritually, and keep us all in your thoughts and prayers. We all could really use it at a time like this. Thank you all for taking the time to read this. It truly means so much to us.