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 most of you know, Amy was diagnosed with High Grade Appendix cancer last year after having a hysterectomy. This nasty cancer has lined the organs in her abdomen. Since this discovery last September, she has been doing chemo therapy. The chemo has kept it from progressing but has not reduced the amount of cancer already present. The doctor believes it has been spreading for years without her knowing. In May, she went to Vanderbilt for a laparoscopy to determine how much cancer was there (this type of cancer does not show up well on scans) and to see if she qualified for surgery and a procedure called CRS/HIPEC ("scraping" of visible cancer followed by a chemo wash). The surgeon decided her quality of life would not be good if they did the surgery after seeing how many organs the cancer was effecting. After many tears and lots of research, Amy has decided to attend Chipsa Hospital in Tijuana, Mexico. She will be flying out on June 18th and will receive treatment for 3 weeks. The treatment uses the body's own immune system to starve the cancer cells. It also incorporates a nutritional element called Gerson Therapy. Chipsa's line of treatment is not available in the U.S. I have attached a link for more information. After that, she will go to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL to meet with a doctor that specializes in the PIPAC procedure. This procedure is a trial in the US but is being done successfully in other countries. It is currently only available at 3 hospitals in the US. PIPAC is much less invasive than the currently approved CRS/HIPEC procedure and is done laparoscopically using pressure and aerosolized liquid chemo to help efficiently spread the chemo within the abdominal cavity. Her doctor at Vanderbilt believes she is a candidate but if not she will be looking out of the country for more options.
The costs for Chipsa, travel and any possible trials is quite high. As of now, it is looking close to $50,000.00. This is all happening extremely fast and time is of the essence. We all love Amy so very much and are doing everything possible to keep her here as long as we can, especially for her 3 beautiful children. Please help in anyway you can and feel free to reach out to me anytime. I will be keeping everyone updated on here with any new information.
https://chipsahospital.org/ 
