Team Jeff

There is no great opening sentence for a medical Go Fund Me. No one wants to figure out how to start this ask.

Over the last few weeks, Jeff Winter (nee Port) was diagnosed with Stage IV (non HER 2, moderately differentiated) esophageal adenocarcinoma (with proficient mismatch repair). In simple terms, he has cancer in his esophagus that has spread to his lungs, liver, and several lymph nodes and is not curable. While every case is unique, his prognosis is poor. There is no path to remission, and with his stage of disease, the median survival time is 1 year to 14 months. This means that 50% of people with his prognosis die sooner than 12-14 months, and 50% live beyond 12-14 months. We plan to do everything we can to get Jeff into the second category, but even the best case scenario is a few years. As Jeff put it today in his first appointment with the oncologist, “I want to do everything I can to live long enough for my youngest to remember me.”

Jeff, his wife Anina and their two young girls Charlotte (2) and Juniper (7 months) have an unimaginable road ahead. Jeff will undergo palliative chemotherapy with the goal of stopping tumor growth, potentially shrinking the tumors that have already formed to improve his quality of life, and giving him time. We are waiting to hear if he is additionally a candidate for immunotherapy (fingers crossed for PD-L1 >1%).

Though his symptoms only got concerning enough to reach out to his doctor in June, Jeff is already very weak. He has been unable to stop losing weight, and cannot get the nutrition he needs from eating. He gets quickly out of breath walking and can’t carry his kids more than a few feet.

In the next week, Jeff will receive a port for chemotherapy, a J-tube to feed nutrition into his stomach, and an additional biopsy of his liver metastases. He is anticipated to start chemotherapy in the next 10-14 days. He will then do 8-12 week stints of chemotherapy followed by scans to check how the treatment is working and make plans for the next round. This process will be week-by-week, assessing side effects, quality of life, and effectiveness of treatments to determine how long, how hard, and what way to fight.

The process of understanding and grieving has just begun for Jeff and his family, but he knows he has a life filled with love and joy, and that his community is everything. Imagine knowing you have a year or two left in your life, and being able to think about what you want to do with it. Jeff is already thinking of the things he would like to do if he feels well enough. Take his dad to a football game. Visit friends in New York. Ski one more (intermediate) slope. Take the kids to Yosemite Valley in the snow. Sit on the beach. “Enjoy” a smoothie of his favorite Thanksgiving foods if he is still unable to eat. And most importantly, soak up his very favorite TV show: his perfect kids growing and learning and laughing (and crying - let's be honest they are babies) all around him.

What Jeff and Anina need from their community most is support, and support takes so many forms. They need childcare. They need distractions. Anina and the kids need food dropoffs. Jeff may need transport. They need phone calls and funny Youtube videos. They need to feel sad, but also to laugh and make very inappropriate cancer jokes. And if you are able, they also need financial support. Anina has had to take a leave from work for an unknown amount of time, as Jeff is unable to care for the kids independently. Jeff, Anina, Charlotte, and Juniper are planning to move to wherever Jeff’s treatment is (most likely Sacramento, but if any clinical trials offer a good possibility of longer or higher quality of life, they may end up moving somewhere to participate). Moving is expensive. Life is expensive. A good fold out couch so you can come visit is expensive. And a wonderful gift we could all give them is to be able to seize the good days and make the most of this beautiful life.