Support for Crystal Schmitz

Our friend and coworker, Crystal Schmitz, needs our help. 

Last year Crystal sold her house in Rochester, MN and moved to Milwaukee to be closer to family and to be able to support her parents - as both of them were battling serious health problems.    Shockingly, Crystal soon found she had her own awful health crisis to deal with, too.

Her ability to work has already been quite limited, and she's only a few months into her battle...

This is Crystal's story from her CaringBridge journal :
www.caringbridge.org/visit/crystalschmitz 

The Basics:  September 27, 2018 I went into the ER with abdominal pain. First they thought they were seeing cirrhosis of my liver and kept asking me how much I drink...for those that know me, this question was laughable...yet they really had no reason to believe me. ;) Anyways, after an ultrasound and then CT scan, they came back and knocked me over with the news...I have cancer! Due to seeing tumors in multiple organs, they were unsure where the cancer started from and decided to admit me so they could do a biopsy of the tumor on my liver the next day. In conjunction with the biopsy, they also drained 7 pounds of fluid from my abdomen, and decided to do an upper GI procedure which revealed some enlarged blood vessels in my esophagus. One of these vessels actually burst while they were in there and they were able to band it and the others that were enlarged. Thank goodness for amazing doctors that think to check on “small” things! To watch for bleeding they kept me in the hospital for a few more days and then sent me home with referrals to a couple different oncologists, while we waited on the biopsy results. 

Unfortunately, it turns out I’m an enigma and the biopsy didn’t clear up too much. They did some blood tests looking at numerous cancer markers and from those results and all the information/scans they had, they narrowed it down to being a GI cancer, though they still are unsure which particular organ it started with.  The smears show both adonocarcinoma and endocrine features, the cancer markers are over lapping, and my non-existent medical history all combine to confuse the doctors. So, they are now sending my biopsy off for some special genetic testing but those results will take a couple weeks and based on how aggressively my cancer is spreading, my oncologist is not willing to wait for those results to come back before starting treatment. So, I saw him Tuesday (Oct 9th), Thursday I am getting my port put in, and then Friday they are going to give me my first doses of chemo. At this point they are just taking their best educated guess at which chemo might help me, but I chose to hope for the best and am truly grateful that they are getting things moving so quickly (there may have been some bribes switching hands to get these appointments so quickly). Lol.

I appreciate all the love, prayers, and positive thoughts everyone’s sent out all ready...more than you could all know. 

Love, Crystal