Hello, I would like to introduce you to Heidi Smith. She is the daughter of John Smith and Rigmor Madsen. She has a 15 year old daughter of her own named Annabelle Cain.She has a husband named Jason Cain.She has CANCER...A little bit about her if I may is is that she is a very loving, hardworking, and giving person who would give her very last dollar if she knew it would help someone in the slightest way. She is a huge believer in helping even the smallest of creatures from dogs and cat to squirrels and humming birds. Yes, it's true she saved a humming bird that a cat had caught and took it to a shelter and it recovered 100%. She went to high school at Tigard high but grew up all over due to her dads job. She did a lot of camping and hiking as a teen and still likes to now. She works/worked two jobs one part time and one full time due to her husband being self employed in a field that at one point did not do very well. So, being the person she is and wanting her family to get through the tough time she took the second job.She has done this for almost three years or more now and this might be part of what contributed to her getting this terrible diagnosis. You see she was just told a bit over two months ago that she has stage three melanoma. She had a mole removed that she had checked every year or more and in just the last six months or less started to change and so she went in and had them remove it. Now if I might go back just a little bit she did take care of her skin with sun screen and this mole was in a place that does not get much exposure to the sunlight because it is located in what doctors call the trunk area of the body or stomach and chest area to be more clear. Well it came back positive and was at a depth of three on a chart going from one to four. Now if you know anything about how this cancer plays out, it is not a good diagnosis to get at the young age of 40. This is a very very agressive cancer even more then other cancers that they know much more about. I don't want to say that one cancer is worse than another but this is one they don't know enough about and is very agressive. Melanoma accounts for only 3 to 4% of skin cancer diagnoses, but kills 79% of skin cancer patients. After the prognosis she had one surgery (sentinel node biopsy and excision of the tumor) to remove a greater area around the mole they took off and one lymph node taken from where the mole had drained to. That one node came back positive. Now after only getting one node that they had to take out we all got a bit ahead of ourselves thinking that things would turn out better then what they did. But with that one positive node, we were told that additional surgery (axilliary lymph node dissection) would be needed. As you might imagine we were devastated but moved forward with the second surgery in less than two weeks time. This time they took all the nodes out of the left arm pit and a couple more that were close to the area. They do this because they want to prevent it from coming back and not just wait it out to see if it does spread to other nodes or becomes mestatic to other organs. Now the plan is to get a port put in her chest and have Interferon treament. This from what I have read and the doctors say is a drug that boosts the immune system. This will be five days a week for four weeks then injections three times a week up to a total of one year. This starts the week of November 2nd and this is the reason for starting this fundraiser. Copays are due every time she steps into the oncology office or visits her surgeon or oncologist. You see even with insurance and her husband working more than he has in a very long time things are starting to get very tight for the family. They do not live the high life and need the extra toys and such. They just need help with the loss of income that Heidi was bringing in. The bills don't stop as many people know and assistance from the hospital only goes so far. She has applied for medical financial assistance and some very nice people have already helped the family out. Anything that anyone might give will be used for the family to cover the extra doctor bills that are not covered by insurance. Those are just now starting to come in as this whole thing has moved so fast. The number in the GoFund Me is just a starting point. This is what the family pays out of pocket until insurance covers in full. Now that it is almost November, we only have two months left after the out of pocket is met and then start all over again January 1st.I put off starting this for as long as I could because we are a proud family and I thought I could take care of things if I tried hard enough. It is just becoming more then I can do with having to take her to all the appointments and work at the same time. After her second surgery she had a drain in the area they took the nodes out of and I was the nurse for more than three weeks it was in. A bacteria formed in the drain causing an infection, not from anything that I had done, but this made Heidi sick and she was put on antibiotics for two full weeks. I have had to take a lot of time off and need to be able to keep some money coming in. This would also help with maybe getting a nurse to come in a couple times a week or someone to just help with everyday chores around the house. The interferon will make her feel like she has the flu. From what I have read she will not feel like doing much even though her personality tells her to do so. I will be working and our daughter is at school five days a week so someone needs to be able to be close just in case something might happen when no one is here. You don't know how thankful we would be for any amount of help no matter how small. Every penny counts in her fight against Melanoma. Again everything that might be raised will go towards the fight of her cancer and the fallout from it. Thank you all for at least reading the post and even sending prayers and positive thoughts. They may not pay the bills but are just as important to us.....
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