The McKenna Family

Hi my name is Toni Gabry. Amanda McKenna has been my best friend and family since we were in first grade. I'm putting together a fundraiser for the McKenna family to assist with the upcoming medical bills they will soon face as Tom was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor.

I know we all want to help when we see our loved ones hurting and while this won't make things perfect, it will surely help with the many bills that will soon be coming their way.

All donations will be made directly to the McKenna family.

I am going to copy Amanda's recent Facebook post that contains more details about their current situation:

::::deep breath::::

I’m sure some of you have seen stories I’ve posted about prayers, hope, going through a difficult time, and may be wondering what is going on.

So, here goes…

First of all, I want to thank everyone who has reached out with love, friendship, support, kind words, meals, donations, etc…

Tuesday, 12/20, was just a regular day. Until it wasn’t.

Long story short, we found out Tom has a brain tumor. The very next day, we were lucky enough to meet with a neurosurgeon at Northwestern, who determined more tests and additional MRIs were needed in order to move forward with next steps.

On 12/29, we had our second meeting. We found out that the tumor is in a spot that is too dangerous to remove without a large possibility of harming healthy brain tissue in his language center.

The plan now is to perform an open biopsy surgery, taking multiple tissue samples from different sections of the tumor, because it could be mixed cell and/or mixed grade. Then after the pathology report comes back, we will determine what will be needed moving forward.

That being said- Tom’s brain surgery is Wednesday, 1/11. If you have any extra prayers, good vibes, healing thoughts, or anything else that you could send our way, especially for Tom and our 3 sweet babies… we would be eternally grateful. Also- we haven’t told the kids many details other than daddy is having surgery, so if you see them or have kids that may see them, please don’t mention anything else yet.

Hug the ones you love and tell them you love them whenever you can, and as much as you can. Life truly can change in the matter of seconds.