Emily’s Healing Journey

Cancer can take many forms, at any point in life. Sometimes it starts at birth, resolves, and comes back in different clothing! What a rollercoaster… Emily has been on such a ride, starting with eye cancer as a baby, which was resolved (phew!), but it liked her so much it came back as Leiomyosarcoma twice. She received surgery to remove a bagel sized tumor a few years ago with great success. 2 years after ago, her scans came back abnormal again(persistent bugger), showing a small nodule on her flank, and multiple lesions on her liver. It’s on like Donkey Kong.

We have embarked on a journey of discovery, both of ourselves and the medical world as a whole. Currently she is receiving interstitial laser therapy in her liver to reduce blood flow to the tumors, which has been hugely successful, alongside systemic laser through IV multiple times a week. We are now embarking on the second part of this journey…microwave ablation! This means they will insert a probe into all of the tumors and hit them with microwaves to destroy the cancer cells, the body will then work on taking out the trash!

Emily is a prime candidate for this procedure because all of her tumors reside on the outside of the liver, and are easily accessible for the probe. This will mitigate any damage to surrounding cells that are not the cancer. This is a very brief procedure (1-2 hours) and involves live CT imagery, while they place the probe into the exact locations of the lesions. She will spend one night in the hospital and then go in daily to our Mexico clinic for IV support, and then the hard part…waiting! We will do scans again in a few months to see how the tissue has reacted (the team is expecting a complete disappearance of tumors) and are very hopeful for a Cancer free Christmas!

This has been an amazing journey, and we are so thankful for being able to go on it together, but it is not without the dedication of our family, friends, and the medical team that has supported us on it. Unfortunately when you are going it alone outside of the normal medical system, it does not come without great cost. Life is priceless, but care rendered is still paid by someone.

The first round of treatments to where we are now has been $50k. Each week we are here costs about $13k, the surgery itself will be $16k, then another week of clinic IVs and support, totaling $92k.

We are so incredibly hopeful that this will be the end of Emily’s cancer journey (medically speaking), but we are not out of the woods yet. Our spirits are high, and we are thankful for everyone who has joined us on this journey, and who we have met along the way.

If you would like to follow along the journey, Emily has a blog she updates as we progress in the healing process;

There Is No Stage Five

https://thereisnostagefive.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-tortoise-and-hare.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR0FUY7ndcaHj72ycJbm55BxLisA2rIh9IlX0e98isw3Zet1F-kp4pp5g-g