Tyler Mills

First post: Nov 16, 2016 Latest post: Jan 6, 2017
On October 28th Tyler was diagnosed large tumor in his abdomen. The doctor’s speculated that the tumor, roughly 15cm long, had likely been there for awhile. After a week of waiting, we reviewed biopsy results and the Memphis doctors offered some possible diagnoses ranging from a sarcoma to carcinoma of stomach or pancreas or potential lymphoma diagnosis. The medical team was still unable to narrow down the type further and an additional biopsy was ordered.


After more waiting, we got confirmation that the tumor was malignant and a carcinoma, but that’s where the answers stopped. The tumor cells taken in the biopsy were too poorly differentiated to determine a finite diagnosis. We still didn’t know what we were dealing with here. After three weeks of stressful waiting for answers, we were referred to Vanderbilt.


On November 15th, we met with an oncologist and a surgical oncologist at Vanderbilt. We’ll share the full details of the meeting in an upcoming journal update post, but the main thing is we are still unsure about the type of cancer we’re facing. But the silver lining is that we have the start of a plan for treatment and we are now officially on the first leg of what may be a long and difficult journey.

We are so, so appreciative of all the love and support of our friends and family (and even some of the friends-of-friends who have heard our story and reached out with kind words). We are so grateful for such a great support system.

We’re going to keep this page updated to keep our friends and family informed, so stay tuned here for updates.  As many of you have offered to help out, we’ve got a Ways to Help Feature on this page where you can sign up with something on our Needs list. One note: Our fridge is stuffed to the brim. Everyone is bringing food, which we appreciate so much. However, Tyler has some dietary limitations and it makes it tough for him to eat much. We’ll update the Ways to Help feature with dietary info as soon as we know more.


Lots of love,

Brooke and Tyler

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