Tom Czerepinski

First post: Jan 13, 2020 Latest post: Apr 17, 2020
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 a few of you may know, Tommy has had a lot going on lately.  If you are just about to hear this, apologies—Tommy has been cautious about sharing any news until we had a more complete prognosis. 

 

As you know, in September 2018, about three days after being laid off from his job, Tommy was hospitalized for what turned out to be colon cancer. After a few months with a really annoying colostomy bag, several surgeries, chemo and radiation he was cancer free and in good health. 

 

Right before Christmas, during a routine CAT scan, the doctors found two small lesions on his liver.  Tommy’s lymph nodes had been clear so the doctors are 99% sure the cancer spread from his colon to his liver through his blood. So, the diagnosis is Stage IV Colon cancer in the liver.  

 

That’s the bad news. The good news is:

 

- The cancer has not spread beyond his liver.

 

- Because the lesions are small and slow growing, the doctors believe they can go in and surgically remove the cancer entirely.  Best case scenario and he’s cancer free after five years!

 

- Tommy will go in for a biopsy on Friday to determine what type of chemo would best treat this cancer.  Then, about a week or two after, he will begin a few rounds of chemo to eradicate any microscopic cancers lesions that were undetectable in the CAT scan. 

 

-After two the three rounds of chemo, they will perform surgery on the liver and remove the cancerous lesions.  

 

-Tommy will receive more chemo after he’s recovered from the surgery.  

 

- If you're looking for hope for all of us in this, the doctors are optimistic that this type of liver cancer can not only be treated but eradicated entirely.

 

With just the few people that Tommy has reached out to so far, the outpouring of love and support we've received in the last few weeks has defined overwhelming, and we cannot thank all of you enough. His email inbox is always full and he’s receiving tons of texts.  We’ve set up this website as a way to share information without personally overwhelming Tommy. 

 

We know that many of you will want to offer help, so we've set up this email list & a Caring Bridge page for periodic updates and suggestions should you want to help: Rides to chemo, coffee with Tom, gas/ food gift cards, etc. 


 

One pressing situation, as if cancer wasn’t enough, is that Tommy’s car has broken down again and we’re not sure how much the repairs will cost.  We’re looking to set Tommy up with a reliable vehicle to get him back and forth to his doctor’s appointments and to as many of James and Ryan’s games as possible. We’ve set up a GoFundMe if you’d like to contribute toward that goal.  See the link on the Caring Bridge page.
The link for that is here:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/1v7w2wyp2o?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet

This is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, so we appreciate everyone's support through this whole process. 

 

Thanks again, and we look forward to being in touch for a very long time-- 80 seems like a reasonable goal. For now, though, we'll start with tomorrow. 

 

All of our love,

Tommy, Kerry, Jill, Jeanne, Tom and Gail and the whole family

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