Ginny is a loving mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and cheer coach. She has been battling cancer with determination and grace for nearly a decade. She is our hero and she needs our help.
Ginny’s first battle with cancer began at 16 years old. A mole removed from her abdomen revealed stage 2 melanoma. She underwent additional surgery and life went on for 10 years. Then Ginny noticed cyst like spots in her breasts. After multiple testing, they realized her lymph nodes were enlarged and later a biopsy revealed stage 4 melanoma. Then those cysts began to show up subcutaneously all over her body which made her disease inoperable. Her battle began at Johns Hopkins where she chose an aggressive form a treatment called Interleukin-2. After 4 treatments, it was determined that it was not working for her. After IL-2 she underwent IL-7 injections and Temodar chemo pills, which did not work for her either. The next big treatment she underwent was at NIH called Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocyte (TIL) treatment with total body irradiation. She was hospitalized for a difficult 30 days and had permanent bone marrow damage from the treatment. The great news is the treatment worked and put her in remission for about 1.5 years. Once she came out of remission she chose a local doctor to administer a drug called Ipilimumab, which did not work. Next her journey took her to Duke University where she was on a drug called Dabrafanib. This drug is a biochem drug that worked and put her in remission but that was very short lived. She also tried a drug called Keytruda which is the latest drug released by the FDA for Melanoma. Unfortunately, it did not work for her either. Which brings us to her current status, her latest scans showed that some of her tumors doubled in size, new tumors, and uptake in her lymph node in her neck. Ginny and her doctor are exploring many options and it looks like a clinical trial at Duke may be her next step. The hope is that tumors ultimately disappear and we can get this monster into remission.
Ginny needs our help. As her friends, we’ve set up this site to collect donations to offset Ginny’s medical expenses. Duke is out of network for Ginny’s insurance and her out of pocket expense is up to $7500 a year, not to mention the co-pays, travel to and from, and prescriptions. Please consider helping our warrior as she faces yet another battle. It is extremely hard to handle this mentally even without the added expense of it. You can help reduce the stress of this cost by donating to this fund.