Jimmy Van De Riet

On September 1st, 2017 I was diagnosed with brain cancer, I was ran through a hundred tests and this is the only thing that is left. My doctors at the mayo clinic said its a glioma tumor. Glioma is kind of a generic name for tumors like this, the reason we don't know exactly what kind of cacer it is is because we don't have a tissue sample. The tumor is at the top of my brain stem and getting a biopsy of it just to figure out the exact name is to risky because I could end up paralyzed or dead so they decided that a biopsy is not an option, because of the place that this tumor is in it affects many things such as breathing, swallowing, seeing, mobility, and fatigue to name a few. The biggest affects I'm having are with lack of mobility in the left side of my body, my left arm and leg are very weak and I'm having more and more trouble walking every day, I also have major fatigue, when I am done with work for the day I have to come home and rest for an hour or two just so I can eat supper and play with my little boy for a few minutes than go to bed. I am also having trouble with swallowing and a serious shortness of breath. At this point the doctors tell me that my only course of action is to get radiation on this spot. The hope is that the radiation will kill the cells of the cancer so it will stop growing. Radiation is 6 weeks long and 5 days a week, there are no garantees that it will work but they have seen cases similar to mine that did work, if the radiation does not work we do not know what comes after that but that is a bridge that we will cross when we get there. This has been devastating news that has been hard on the family but in all this chaos we do have several things working in our favor, the first thing is our faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, both myself and my wonderful wife have a strong faith as well as our family. The second thing is that we have family that will drop anything and do everything for us and to help us get through this. With those two things combined there is nothing we cant overcome and cancer is just one more bump in the road that we will be able to look back on and say we beat it together. I am so thankful to have such a strong, determined and beautiful wife by my side to keep my spirits up, no matter how bad the day has been I always smile when I see her and our precious little boy. I will do my best to keep this updated so all of you can keep up to date with what is going on, and any questions you have I will do my best to answer them all with the best information I have. Thank you all for your love and support. Please keep us in your prayers as we go through this. Prayer are the best thing for us