Tim Walsh & Family -- Medical Bills During Chemo

On Wednesday, July 20th, my husband, Tim, went into the ER after months of abdominal pain and was admitted within hours being diagnosed with Intussusception of the Bowel. The way the nurse described this to us, is "Imagine opening a condom, and how it's rolled into itself, well that's what your colon did..." Apparently this is very rarely seen in adults (fewer than 20,000 cases per year). He was immediately put on a clear liquid diet, would "bowel prep" (kind of like what they have you do leading up to a colonoscopy) the following day, and would have laparoscopic surgery on Friday, July 22nd to remove a foot-long portion of his colon.

When they began laparoscopically on Friday, they found his colon to be hardened, therefore they ended up having to open his abdomen enough for the surgeon to fit his fist into his stomach to remove the now 2 foot long part of his colon, as well as taking the surrounding lymph nodes. They found a 4 cm tumor inside the colon, which they believe led to the intussusception .

Fast forward a week to his post op appointment. We were happy to have this behind us at this point, but little did we know this nightmare was just beginning.

On Thursday, July 28th when we went in for this appointment, his surgeon told us the full pathology report wasn't back yet, but he received a call from the pathologist prior to our arrival. He was told that they were running additional tests, but that Tim does have Colon Cancer. At this point, he scheduled us to come back in [yet another] week, for full pathology report.

No on, EVER wants to hear the big C word, little on not having any formal prognosis yet, right? At this point, he said stage one was ruled out, so we were hoping and praying for anything news indicating it had not spread to any other organs. That's best case scenario at that point.

On Thursday, August 4th, we made the trek back over to his surgeons' office for the full pathology report. The second the surgeon told us it WAS found in the surrounding lymph nodes that were removed during surgery, my heart dropped down to my toes. So now both stage one and stage two have been ruled out officially.

So he was going to send over the referral to meet with an oncologist. Before we left his office (it's 3pm by now) with raw emotions, they told us that if we don't hear from the oncologists' office to get scheduled by Monday morning, to call them back and they'll contact them to speed it up.

Tim will be starting Chemo treatment on August 23rd, and it will run for six months.

Needless to say, this is going to bring with it large unexpected medical bills. We are not the type of people that would ask people for money, but we never thought we'd be in this position to begin with.

Every cent would help at this time, and for the time to come. Tim most likely be able to work, so we're down to one income which would be fine for normal times. but times are not normal for us anymore. We appreciate and LOVE you all! Go hug your loved ones and please, go LIVE YOUR LIVES! You never know what will happen.