Help Renfrew’s best taxi driver!!

Hello, My name is Amy and as you can see I am fundraising to help someone very close to me with medical bills and the costs associated with being very ill. Tim has always been very private about his life and especially his medical issues. Until recently when a mass was found in his duodenum. That’s after his stomach and before his intestines.

We had a endoscopy and biopsy done in Renfrew and were referred to oncology at The General Hospital in Ottawa. Endoscopy done in Renfrew revealed no cancer cells, which concerned the oncology doctors as they were sure it was cancer and just not a big enough biopsy was taken. So they sent us for another endoscopy with biopsy done at the general. The doctor after the biopsy said I hate to say it but it looks like cancer has found you. So we were devastated of course. 10 days later we got the results no cancer cells.

How could this be when two doctors have said cancer. I mean if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…. It has to be a duck right!??

We met with the oncologist again and he shared with us that Tim is not a good candidate for treatment of the mass. Treatment being surgical removal of the mass. It’s a 10+ hour surgery that is very complicated on the best of people. It’s called the Whipple surgery and involves the liver, pancreas and duodenum. Tim being out of shape (it happens as you age) and having had a heart attack on dec 29th 2021 did not make him a great candidate for surgery.

While things were looking grim to say the least Tim was drastically loosing weight because the mass hindered his eating. The mass was found to be blocking 75% of his duodenum making it hard for food to pass through. He had lost almost a pound a day for months while trying to figure this out.

Test after test and blood work after blood work were done. We met with a different oncologist and he let us know that the cels from the biopsy were pre cancerous. That the mass was now I interfering with the liver drainage. That means it’s growing… not good at all.

But he did give us some hope! He said if we (ok mostly Tim) worked hard to exercise and gain healthy muscle mass that surgery could be done! We started a purée diet high in fat to help him gain weight, we also walk daily and have increased our distance. Boost and ensure have been added as many meat products still cause Tim problems to digest.

As you can imagine Tim has been off work since the beginning of February. The household bills still needing to be paid and trips back and forth to Ottawa are not cheap. Let alone the new dietary restrictions and supplements. So we/he is humbly asking for help to make ends meet. This is only the beginning of I am sure will be a very trying time for him. Any help to alleviate this huge stress from him would be very appreciated.

Thank you so much for your consideration and I will keep updates here as we learn more and go forward.

Amy