Ron Hostetter Ron and Sharon Hostetter

Ron and I welcome you to our CaringBridge website. We are using this site to keep family and friends updated in one place during this Journey.

Isaiah 41:10 KJV

[10] Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

This verse Isaiah 41:10 God gave me as I woke up one morning just after the bad news started coming our way, and as the days move forward on this journey we are on it has been and is a promise from God that we are holding onto. With news like this we need a God that is able and we choose to trust in Him. Yet in this season we find it exhausting as each new detail comes to light and must be dealt with. It’s during these times we so appreciate and yes need your prayers. Thank you for coming along side us!!

Many of you are aware that Ron has been diagnosed with medullary thyroid cancer and it is for sure in stage 3 and possible stage 4 but more things have to happen to determine exactly what stage. In any case it means the cancer is not contained as it is currently in his thyroid and lymph nodes in the neck for sure and possibly the liver and right lung so we are heading back to the doctor on November 10th for preop as surgery is required.
We have been told that medullary cancer is a very rare form of thyroid cancer that is very aggressive unlike most other forms of thyroid cancer. So that being the case it needs to be treated sooner then later. We have been told that treatment for this is basically surgery to remove it completely. This cancer isn’t treated with radiation nor common chemotherapy. If the marker test comes back zero after surgery it means there is a good chance the cancer is gone however if it shows it up at all to any degree it means you will live with it the rest of your life as it has what they call a very small molecular footprint so it can’t be easily traced in your body. In that case treatment would be a daily chemo pill to keep it at bay and regular check ups of pet scans and ct scans to look for new outbreaks of cancer anywhere in the body.

So how did we get to this point? .... Well, for sure it’s not anything we were prepared to hear.
For some time now even before he had COVID back in December Ron would be out of breath and breathing heavy and at times really fatigued for no reason. So mid summer we started doctoring at the Ft Snelling VA hospital to get to the bottom of things.

They fist started to look at his heart with all the tests you would expect EKG, stress test and the like. The test came back normal, so they called
for a CT scan of the blood vessels around the heart to see if anything might be causing his symptoms. That was about mid September. The blood vessels looked fine but the scan showed a large nodule in his right lower lung which due to the size they could not rule out cancer. The other thing they saw was a large lesion in the liver which by itself isn’t necessarily concerning but there were multiple other smaller spots found in the liver as well. So a PET scan was recommended to scan for cancer in the body and an MRI of the liver.

Now a PET scan works when they give you a radioactive sugar for your body to burn, the idea being cancer eats energy faster then normal healthy cells so the scan looks for the hot spots of radioactive sugar use.

So the results came back and the doctor says.... Well the good news is the lungs and the liver didn’t show up on the PET scan so now we can rule out the rapid growing cancers!!??? Excuse me .... What does that mean? So we are told well it’s probably nothing to be concerned with but it could still be a slow growing cancer so every 3 months Ron will have to be checked to see if the nodule grows. And oh by the way Ron’s thyroid lite up hot on the PET scan along with to other masses just below the thyroid in his neck, so we are scheduling you for an ultrasound of that area.

So we have the ultrasound and as you probably already guessed it didn’t go well.
We are then scheduled for a biopsy of the thyroid on November 2nd which brought us to this point in what seems to be a very bad nightmare but unlike a nightmare you can’t just wake up and it’s over. So as I said earlier we are going back down November 10 for Ron’s preop and schedule a surgery date to remove the cancer.


So for now here are some things we would like you to pray for us:

- a complete healing
- if not no cancer after surgery (to include none in the liver or lungs or neck area)
- a speedy recovery
- Ron has his voice as currently the cancer is effecting his vocal cords @ wisdom for the doctor’s as to what next
- peace for us and our families in this storm
- safe travel and vehicles that run
- that financial needs continue to be met