Kelly's legacy will live on and his life never forgotten
Donation protected
**update 12/5/24***
My precious husband, best friend, father to my babies, provider, security, comforter, and better half passed away at home surrounded by his family on 12/2/24
He fought hard to the end - he never gave up and never stopped hoping for healing.
We are continuing to raise donations to help with cost of memorial services and paying bills that are not considerate enough to stop coming.
Thank you everyone for your generosity, love, and prayers these last 15 months. Our lives will forever be changed - we are hopeful that one day we will see light thru the darkness and find peace.
In His Grace,
Dana, Ella, and Easten
Follow our story here
On behalf of our family we want to thank everyone who has donated and shared our story. It’s amazing to see the generosity of everyone!
Thank you again and please keep up with our story on Caringbridge!
Follow along for updates on our story https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/kellyhebert/journal/view/id/6539adcb93732073b38619ef
This is a beginning of the story for those of you who are wondering how this all started!
We are an average American family living our lives, doing the best we can everyday. Husband and wife married 16 years and two teenage kids - girl 16 and boy 14 - both in Highschool. My husband is only 44 years old - way way too young to be fighting for his life. He's worked hard since he was 18 - taking care of himself and striving to always be the best man possible! He's never been sickly, never had surgery, just a good old Southern Cajun man with dirt under his nails and a fire in his heart! This is the short of our current story - it's not over yet and we are gonna keep fighting and pushing forward no matter what is thrown at us!
A long, long time ago before the beginning of chemo there were no signs, no symptoms, no indication of the shit storm to come!!! Kelly never complained of stomach pain, indigestion, nausea, heartburn, bloating, etc - all signs that would have been an indicator of a brewing storm.
It was only 3 weeks before his diagnosis that Kelly felt "like his lunch was getting stuck" in his upper stomach area. He was forced to drink a lot of water to "force the food down". After a few days of this annoyance persisting he called me to voice his concern and at that point we called the gastro doctor to set up and endoscope to see what was going on.
Now Kelly will tell you he had some concerns at this point that "something was wrong", a notion he kindly did not share with me
Once the dr got word of Kelly's odd symptom and many phone calls later, Kelly was scheduled for the endoscope rather promptly (should've alluded me to the storm coming)
That fateful day.......doctor comes to see us after endoscope and proceeds to say there is a mass in Kelly's lower esophagus and looks to be in his opinion cancerous.
Words can not express the feeling of those words being spoken into the atmosphere. It was literally like I had touched an electric fence - this electric pain quickly shot thru my body. My brain froze and I had the doctor repeat what he just said because surely he was mistaken and misspoke.
Kelly barely reacted, he looked at me and said "I kind of thought it would it would be something bad" - I wanted to smack him - why didn't he warn me!
The doctor continued to talk this foreign language to us spitting out these words that should not apply to us, words that at 44 years old should not be part of our world.
Fast forward CT scans and results that would continue to rock our world in the most horrific way.
Lymph nodes with cancer cells, liver with tiny spots, lungs with tiny spots, stomach with tiny spots.
Like seriously what the actual Fuck is happening.
Not just a tumor in your esophagus but cancer dancing around and wreaking havoc in other places in your body.
This is not the journey we want to take, this is not the story we want to tell, this is not the life we thought we would have together only a short 16 years later.
But here we are, this is our life now and by God we are going to fight like hell to keep it going! We are going to pray hard, love hard and fight hard. It's all we can do! This is our new story - our journey with cancer - our journey leaning hard into God, his love, grace, strength and promise of salvation!
We are currently undergoing chemotherapy and immunotherapy twice a month indefinitely. Kelly has already had a CT scan, a PET scan, genetic testing of the tumors, pathology of tumors, biopsy of liver, a mediport placed in his chest, and we are expected to have repeat CT Scans every two months.
All of this has been incredibly financially difficult for our family and unfortunately, having never expected cancer to devastate our family at only the age of 44 we didn't have extra medical or cancer insurance coverage.
If I can give anyone any advice after this - please make sure you get your affairs in order sooner than later. No one ever expects to be in this position or have to chose between paying mortgage or paying chemotherapy treatments. Hindsight is an ugly thing and I wish we would've have been more prepared. Get the extra insurance, pay the minimal payments and get cancer insurance. Protect your family and home - tragedy is not bias and has no time lines.
Organizer
Kelly Hebert
Organizer
Schertz, TX