Carla Russell Carla Russell

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting. 


As you may be aware, Carla has dealt with multiple occurrences of breast cancer in recent years.  Over the past few weeks, she has had increasing symptoms that we realized in January were the cancer returning once again and that it was more serious than the previous times.  This led to numerous doctors and therapies to try to address the symptoms and hold back the disease.  


Through February, we were caring for Carla at home, but she was getting progressively weaker and losing appetite, which finally led to us taking her in to the hospital on February 19th due to breathing difficulties and dehydration.  In the hospital, they have been focused on the getting her breathing better and helping with hydration and nutrition.  One of the areas of focus has been procedures to address fluid buildup in her chest area which was a cause of the breathing issues.  


As of this writing, Carla is still in the hospital, stabilized and mostly comfortable, with some additional procedures and care needed to get all her systems functioning normally again.  Once we reach that hurdle, then the next focus would be potential medication to go after the cancer.  This would be targeted and milder than some medications, but would require a certain amount of strength to handle it.  We will be carefully and prayerfully considering the decisions on how to proceed through this process.


Thanks so much to the many people who have been praying for Carla and for all the encouraging messages, cards, and gifts.  It means a lot to know that we have a community of people behind us to help and encourage our family through this difficult time.