Please help Kelsey with her cancer battle!

Hi, my name is Shannon Voss, I am Kelsey Benjamin‘s mom. Last December Kelsey found a swollen lymph node on her neck and decided to go to the doctor to have it looked at. The doctor, which was not her regular primary care doctor, told her it was nothing to worry about and to just keep an eye on it.

In March of this year Kelsey noticed the lymph node in her neck had changed, it felt bigger, more swollen. She made another appointment with her primary care doctor to get it looked at again. Her doctor agreed that the lymph node had changed in size and strongly suggested that she go to a specialist to have it looked at and possibly further testing.

Kelsey followed up with a specialist. The specialist told Kelsey that he would need to do a biopsy before coming to any conclusions on what was causing her enlarged lymph node.

Kelsey had surgery to remove the enlarged lymph node. She was told that she would know the results of the biopsy in 10-14 days. I know those two weeks felt like forever for all of us as we waited to hear Kelsey’s results from the biopsy.

I remember exactly where I was, what time of day and who I was with when I got the call from Kelsey. I knew something was wrong by the tone in her voice... “Mom, I have cancer”. Those words were very difficult for me to hear and not the news we had prayed and hoped for.

Kelsey was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. This type of cancer affects the lymphatic system and we were told Kelsey would need chemotherapy to treat this cancer. Upon hearing the news of her diagnosis I immediately began praying and sharing the news with our family and friends asking them to pray as well.

The next step was to see an oncologist. Kelsey made her appointment and I was able to go along with her. The oncologist was very informative and began explaining what her cancer journey would look like. He told us the procedures she would need first were: a PET scan to determine what stage of cancer, an echocardiogram, and a surgery to put a port in her chest for her chemotherapy treatments.

The week of July 12th Kelsey had a PET scan to determine what stage of cancer she had, a surgery to have the port put in her chest for her chemotherapy treatments and she had an echocardiogram. Kelsey also found out that week that her cancer is stage 2 Hodgkin Lymphoma and was told she will begin her chemotherapy treatments in early August.

We’ve had several people ask what they can do for Kelsey and her family and how they can help out. We ask that you continue to pray for Kelsey, as she is preparing to start her chemo treatments in the next couple weeks. She has already been so brave!

With this diagnosis there has been a lot of emotions, physical pain from procedures thus far and financial worries. We believe God is faithful and He will be with Kelsey, Jordan and Kailor throughout her journey. As the medical bills are already starting to come in and the insurance does not cover all of the medical expenses, we wanted to start this fund to help cover the cost of the doctor visits, surgical procedures, chemotherapy treatments and the time Kelsey will need to take off from work.

I also want to say thank you so much to everyone who has reached out already and blessed her with kindness and words of encouragement, your prayers and for loving my daughter and her family!!