Celebrating the Beautiful Life of Casandra

I am starting this campaign for my closest friend, Casandra, many know her as Cassie. Cassie is a 31 year-old nature and animal lover, cat mom of 4 fur babies, social worker, massage therapist, avid gardener, aunt, the best friend anyone could have, and loving wife to her own best friend, Ian. And right now, she desperately needs our help.

Cassie’s current situation began in 2013 when she began having sudden and unexplained seizures. She was having several a week, sometimes several a day. After a few MRIs and other tests, she was diagnosed with a primary brain tumor in the temporal lobe. The surgery was scheduled 5/27/2015, just ten days after Cassie and Ian's wedding. The surgery was successful and pathology came back benign. Everyone involved in Cassie's life was so optimistic.

Having been together for ten years now, Cassie and Ian recently decided to start a family. As someone who takes every precaution possible, she scheduled an MRI to get the "all clear" to move forward with pre-conception planning. However, plans to start a family came to a screeching halt when that MRI returned images of another brain tumor, but this time the tumor had grew to the size of a walnut. She was immediately scheduled for another brain surgery on 3/11/2021. The recovery is currently going well, but 2 weeks later we learned the tumor was malignant. Her whole world was flipped upside-down when she heard the words, “you have brain cancer”.

This particular tumor is descriptively called a “gangliogliosarcoma” but there is no actual name for it, this an extremely rare tumor that has no baseline information and no WHO designation. The cancer is very aggressive and this unclassified tumor is a grade 4 with a chance of spreading outside of the brain to other parts of the body and/or bones. This type of brain tumor itself if less than 10% of all brain tumors, and less than 10% of those have been known to become cancerous.

Given the aggressiveness of this cancer, Cassie will be going through a range of treatments including 6 weeks of radiation followed by at least a year of chemotherapy. The chemotherapy could however be several years long depending if the cancer is receptive to treatments.

Starting a family is very important to Cassie and Ian and IVF (in vitro fertilization) is their only hope of having a successful pregnancy after treatments. Radiation and chemotherapy will damage healthy ovaries and egg cells. IVF is a very expensive process but it is a meaningful goal for Cassie and Ian to accomplish. Not only is IVF expensive and not covered by insurance, there are many other financial burdens they simply cannot pay for without our help from lost income, to travel and parking for her treatments, we realize that there may be many more unforeseen expenses.

To all those who are visiting this page, thank you so much, whether you know Cassie or Ian personally or have come across her story. We are setting the fundraising goal to $30,000 to cover the projected costs of IVF, additional fertility treatments, costs related to treatments and travel, and to help with the lost income.

***We have a deadline of just 6 weeks to make this happen so the fertility preservation can happen before chemotherapy begins!***

Every cent matters, every share matters, and every act of love and support truly matters so much at this time.