Help Charlie and her family with Isaiah Garza

It all started in May 2020 when Charlie was starting to show strange symptoms. She was losing her balance easily, complaining of headaches, and vomited a few times randomly at 6am with no other sick symptoms. One doctors visit later and Charlie was immediately sent to have a CT scan done. A long two hours after the CT was done, we got the call that Charlie had a tumor in her brain.

We rushed over to the hospital and an MRI was done and surgery was scheduled for less than 36 hours later. Before surgery, Alecs and I were warned about a common syndrome that is developed after brain tumor removal in the specific area Charlie’s tumor was in— the cerebellum. They told us that basically, Charlie was going to wake up unable to do anything she was before. Talk, walk, sit up, use her hands. It was a devastating thing to anticipate upon all else.

After a grueling 10 hour procedure, Alecs and I were immediately called by the surgeon herself and were told that they predict that, by the look of it, it is cancer. And because of COVID-19, there could only be one parent with Charlie during this time, causing a lot of emotional hardship for everyone. And, shortly after Charlie’s first high dose chemotherapy cycle, I had an emergency C-section and almost lost my life.

Charlie endured 10 high dose chemotherapy rounds where she stayed in the hospital half of each month for 8 months. In the middle of these high dose chemotherapy rounds, we received Charlie’s tumor’s final pathology. It turned out they needed to treat Charlie with more than what they had originally planned. We could either radiate Charlie’s brain, or opt for an Ommaya Reservoir (head port) and insert chemotherapy directly into Charlie’s spinal fluid.

Less than a month later, the surgery was planned to insert the Ommaya Reservoir and start treating the spinal fluid immediately. She received 10 doses of chemotherapy through her head port on top of the other treatment. Charlie has endured many unpleasant symptoms as a result from the intense chemo such as vomiting (she had to have an NG tube for 8 months to keep her weight stable), exhaustion, brain fog, mood changes, neuropathy in her limbs, stiffness in her ankles, stomach pain, hearing loss, and from the whole experience is showing signs of PTSD.

In January, Charlie completed the high dose chemotherapy and switched over to maintenance chemotherapy that is taken orally at home for 21 day cycles at a time and weekly labs are drawn. She completed these cycles August 31st and was officially done with chemo and we hoped to establish a new normal.

We spent the next couple months trying to pick up the pieces that the last year and a half had left us with. Charlie had her 3 month post-treatment scan in December. We had very high hopes that Charlie would still be cancer free and we could continue to rebuild. That, unfortunately, was not the case.

On December 7th, 2021, we learned that Charlie’s cancer was not only back, but it was back and had spread everywhere in the cerebellum of her brain and her entire spine. We were told that we had only 3-6 months left with her. A little over a week after that meeting, the surgeon that removed Charlie’s original tumor came forward saying, confidently, that she could de-bulk Charlie’s tumors that were the most worrisome. We agreed in hopes that it would give us more time with her than expected.

Her surgeon ended up removing 3 whole tumors from Charlie’s brain and spine. She said the surgery went easier than she anticipated and that the most worrisome tumor of them all just “peeled” off of Charlie’s spinal cord. It truly feels like a miracle. Because of the success of the surgery, we decided to radiate the cerebellum and full spine in hopes that it would buy us even more quality time with her now that there wasn’t bulky tumors for the radiation to penetrate.

Charlie completed 6 difficult weeks of radiation treatment that consisted of being put under anesthesia 5 days a week on February 25, 2022. Her post radiation scan was on March 31, 2022 and it showed the cancer is responsive to the treatment and is currently shrinking, which is the outcome we hoped for. This was our biggest hope to buy us time.

Because of how quickly and aggressively her tumor returned after being off of chemotherapy, we know that all attempts we do going forward is only to buy us precious time with our daughter. Our main goal is to keep the cancer at bay for as long as possible while also keeping her as comfortable as possible and maintain her quality of life.

Alecs has been off of work since the news of relapse and with how difficult things have been, we can not imagine him returning to work during all of this. All we both want is to be able to spend this valuable time with Charlie and soak in every little moment. We want to be able to take her places she wants to go and see the things she wants to see. We want to be able to create memories with her to carry on with us.

Within the next few weeks, Charlie will start a more aggressive approach of chemotherapy in hopes to give us the most time possible. This will consist of being at the hospital a lot. It will be difficult for Alecs to go back to work when he would constantly need days off, sometimes on extremely short notice. We have two other children named Jackson (3 years old) and Theodore (1 year old), meaning one of us has to be home with them while the other takes Charlie to the hospital. In our case, it makes the most sense for us to both be home at this time.

Any donations will be used for anything Charlie medically needs, helping with bills, food, gas, and giving Charlie the life she deserves while she’s here. We truly appreciate anything so much. Bless you all.