BUDD STRONG

Hello family and friends of Derek in our BUDDSTRONG community. As you know, Derek has been courageously battling his stage 4 lung cancer for three years now. By all accounts, Buddmin is a MIRACLE! He has been through so very much in these past three years and has shown grace and tenacity to everyone who knows him. Derek survived a left lower lobectomy in January 2021 that gave him a massive win with this disease! Since then, he has gone through chemotherapy, radiation, targeted therapies, infusions, medications and soooo many MRI/CT/PET scans he should be glowing. Through all of this, Derek has continued to work part-time in order for us to maintain our ever-critical health insurance. When he feels well, which has been a lot this past eight months, we mob around the mountains on our bikes, hike, camp, fish and just carry on with our simple and very happy lifestyle. We rest when we need to and put our feet up with a Podcast while sipping tea and counting our blessings for the time we have together! This disease has been in his beautiful brain since he was diagnosed in 2019. Our incredible radiology oncology team at Oregon Health Science University (OHSU) in Portland has continued to take phenomenal care of Derek and address the tumors as they come up. He has received Stereotactic Radiation many times to keep his brain tumors under control for three years but unfortunately, two have gained a blood supply and require immediate surgical resection. We are still processing this news as we just found this out a few days ago. We are preparing the logistics now and pray that his team is confident, steady and thorough. With much interest from friends we have decided to re-open our GoFundMe campaign while we are focusing on Derek's surgery and recovery. I will keep those interested up to date on our CaringBridge site. Please only consider contributing if it is not a hardship to you or your family. Please keep the prayers and positive energy coming our way. We are in humble gratitude to you all. Love, Kim and Derek

We have a CaringBridge site set up that Kim updates friends and family on progress, treatments and how things are going. 

If interested please follow at https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/derekbudd

With sincere love and gratitude,

Derek and Kim