Mary Jo Gruba

Welcome to Mary Jo's CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. Between myself (Michelle), Andrea and Lana we will all help to keep you updated with mom throughout this entire journey. We appreciate all the love and support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
Mom started having some lower abdominal pain early September. She went to the doctor on September 21st, 2021 to get it checked out at the Elk River Clinic. The doctor did an internal ultrasound and found a cyst on her ovary, thickening of the fallopian tube and other polyps. They then sent out a message to all hospitals around asking for a referral for mom to be seen and get checked out right away. They had an opening at the University of MN. On October 6th mom and dad traveled to University of Minnesota where they did some biopsies of the cyst. She then was sent to the Princeton Hospital to have a CT scan done. The CT scan showed nodules on her lungs as well which the doctor assumed was caused by the cyst on her ovary meaning cancer. On October 19th they traveled to the university of Minnesota again where mom had a procedure done to look around in the lungs and get more biopsies. Since the nodules in her lungs were small and actually in her lungs they just did a more extensive surgery to get bigger tissues of the cyst and nodules and do more biopsies of the ones in her uterus. The biopsies came back positive and mom was officially diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She has been recovering from that procedure for 2 weeks and just had her post op appt yesterday. They said blood work looks good and she is now ready to start chemo. The plan right now is for her to start chemo and do 3 rounds of it, which is about 9 weeks. After 9 weeks they want to do another ultrasound and CT scan to see if everything looks like it has gotten smaller and hopefully contained in only her uterus. At that point they will do a hysterectomy. She will then need 3 more rounds of chemo just to make sure everything is gone and there is nothing left! The doctor said sometimes it takes longer and all we can do is just wait and hopefully the chemo helps quickly. For those of you that know mom knows she is an extremely strong woman. We all know it will be long and difficult journey but we know she can beat this! Dad has been absolutely wonderful going with mom to appointments and being there for her as well. She also has a wonderful support system everywhere! Today was her first day of chemo. Her appt was at 10am at the University if Minnesota. It took roughly 6 hours to get all the medications administered intravenously. Mom brought a book along and puzzle book to do, but the anti-nausea meds and benadryl they give before the chemo meds made her pretty tired. Dad was not allowed in the room but he waited in the waiting room. I talked with mom on her way home and she said she feels fine right now, just tired. She will need lots of rest and time to heal.
Thank you Love Michelle, Andrea and Lana and families