Extra Hope for Randy and the Burtz Family

On October 25, Randy Burtz updated his friends and family on his month in Russia, undergoing a risky treatment for Multiple Sclerosis, posting on Facebook:

"Well, I’m finally back home after a month in Moscow treating Multiple Sclerosis.

I’ve been pretty quiet about my health struggles, but I finally felt like sharing a little bit. About 4 years ago I started experiencing symptoms (loss of balance, memory problems, muscle spasms, etc.) and MRI’s confirmed autoimmune demyelination (a telltale sign of MS). After years of dealing with relatively worthless doctors and deteriorating health, I had gotten to the point where I was resigned to the fact that I was going to have retire from a job I love so much at Western (the university and my colleagues have been incredibly supportive).

They call MS a snowflake disease (not because it only affects liberals), because it impacts everyone who has it in different ways. Like a recent article said, “Put 20 of us in a room and you will have 20 different lists of symptoms.” Multiple Sclerosis means “many scars” where the autoimmune demyelination leaves scars (called lesions) on the brain where permanent damage occurs. While there’s a wide range for “normal”, 10-15 lesions is average. At the last count I have 30 lesions. Many people show physical symptoms (difficulty walking or writing) others show cognitive decline such as memory, decision-making, and speech (such as mixing words up and difficulty finding words).

I fall into the latter category, so Erin and I often hear “he looks fine!” or “you seem to be doing great!”, because I don’t have the more visible version of this disease. Dealing with comments like that and is one of the reasons I’ve remained silent. Other than knowing how much this has impacted Erin and the boys, it has been the one of the most frustrating things about all of this.

With very few treatment options available, I decided to seek a rather risky treatment that includes a high-dose chemotherapy (it’s called hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation and is the same treatment that Selma Blair received for her MS) that attempts to reset your immune system to keep it from attacking your brain.

Why Russia!? The same treatment is actually offered at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, and in Denver, Chicago, etc. Many countries around the world offer it for free to their citizens to treat MS. Unfortunately, insurance will not cover the treatment and the cost is a minimum of $240,000 in the US. We’ll still spend decades paying it off, but the same protocol was ¼ the cost in Moscow, and it’s one of two places that offer it to international patients. The Russian Dr. Fedorenko has been performing the treatment for 13 years. He and the staff are as kind and caring as you’d hope to find. Still, a month in a Russian hospital was pretty surreal!

We really won’t know if the treatment has worked for a year or so, but it is the first time in a long time I have felt any hope for the future."

If you know Randy, you can imagine how difficult it was to get him to agree to let us create this GoFundMe. But, if you know Randy, we're sure that you agree it's inconceivable to imagine a world in which everyone who loves him, Erin, Carson, and Hudson would allow them to spend the next decade paying off medical bills alone. Let's add to the hope for the future that Dr. Fedorenko and his team have given the Burtz family by helping to defray some of those medical costs.