Help Dina in her Fight Against Cancer

Hello,

I'm writing today on behalf of my loving wife Dina Deeds. I am her husband, Ken. Dina has been diagnosed with a stage 4 GI neuroendocrine tumor (NETs) that has advanced to neuroendocrine carcinoma. It's a rare type of GI tract cancer and Dina is in a true life or death battle to beat cancer.

Dina first felt signs of cancer on a trip we took in spring of 2023. Upon coming back from the trip, she saw her primary care physician and then was treated at the Logan Heath GI Clinic. She was prescribed many pills and regiments but after 10 months there was no success, and she was discharged from the GI clinic. 2 weeks later, in late January, she only became more ill after she slipped and fell on the ice. Her pain was exceptional and after a couple days of not holding water down we went to the ER. At that time, we learned Dina had a 13x11x5 cm liver tumor, her left lobe was in a state of necrosis, her liver was barely functioning, and the cancer had probably come from somewhere else. Possibly 4 to 6 months to live based on her liver condition but hopefully more.

Walking out of the exam room was not easy that day. 7 or 8 nurses and doctors were chatting and laughing and they went dead silent and put their heads down as we walked out of the room and passed by. Dina is a nurse. She told me people like her are referred to as the walking dead on the floor. I wouldn’t wish that day upon anyone. Dina has always taken cancer seriously. She has gotten exams on time, went to doctors for 10 months fearing it might be cancer, worked in oncology and endoscopy to fight cancer, and despite it all found herself with advanced and life-threatening cancer. It was and remains a tough pill to swallow. We lived ready to hear stage 1 or stage 2 cancer one day, but stage 4, I just don’t have words for it.

After another 8 weeks of testing, a failed biopsy sample (due to the small size of the sample taken), and an out of pocket $8K pet scan, we discovered Dina's cancer had spread beyond her liver to 5 bones including her femur and lower vertebrae. The 2nd biopsy came in shortly after and gave us the data to know she had NETs.

As many of you know Dina is a healer. She has dedicated her life to parallel careers in healing and became both a LMT and an RN. As an RN she has spent her career fighting cancer and has worked in endoscopy for over a decade. She lost her father too early in life and never wanted a child to go through what she did. I’ll never forget the day she could not work anymore. She was in tears about canceling peoples’ colonoscopies that day. She was more worried about a little boy or girl losing a parent from cancer than her own situation.

Unfortunately, with 10 months of it not being detected, time for detecting the type of cancer, insurance hassles, and a biopsy that had to be done twice, 11 weeks passed before starting treatment. In those 11 weeks Dina pursued all holistic approaches and found knowledge and support from all the doctors and healers she has worked with.

For care Dina traveled to the Cleveland Clinic where specialists have treated NETs before. Dr. Niar, of the Cleveland Clinic, is working with our local oncologist, Dr. Ness, and Dina started chemotherapy locally 4 weeks ago. There have been ups and downs, we’ve been given some bad odds, but Dina is fighting, and we keep hope and belief that she will beat this.

Financially we find ourselves in short term stress and thus write this today. There isn’t good timing for something like this. It came at a time when we just invested in growing my business and we won’t feel the return on that for a couple more months. We’ve had an $8K pet scan, travel costs (and likely more), Dina being out of work, and the first wave of medical bills rolling in before our deductible is reached. We think we will make it but finances are adding stress. And stress isn't good for healing. We post this in hope to raise a few thousand to just get through the next 2 months and not feel the stress of missing a house or bill payment. We'll joyfully be returning any extra money when Dina is up on her feet and ripping mountain bike trails again.