As many now know our mom Stacey Swedzinski was recently diagnosed with a very aggressive form of non-small cell squamous carcinoma which metastasized to her bones (ribs, hips, right leg) and her liver. Because of the extent of its spreading, it is now classified as stage 4. Our mom has since undergone 10 rounds of radiation treatment. The standard protocol for the treatment of this type of cancer is to utilize heavy hitting chemotherapy following the radiation treatments. Research shows a very low success rate using this treatment protocol for her kind of cancer. After consulting with many wellness practitioners in the Functional Medicine field my dad (also very big into Functional/Complimentary Medicine) determined that conventional chemo would do more harm than good and could shorten my mom’s life given her already fragile condition. Unfortunately, her cancer did not possess the correct genome (PDL-1) to utilize immunotherapy as we hoped for in the treatment. Those of you who know our mom know that she’s a fighter and she’s not ready to give up so other options for treatment had to be considered to give her that fighting chance. Our family found a medical clinic in Arizona that specializes in tough cases like my mom’s which we felts was a better option for treating her type of cancer with a much higher success rate and a dramatically lower downside. Unfortunately, most of these treatments are not covered by insurance and are very expensive. Our goal for this fund is to help offset the cost of such treatments as much as possible. We appreciate your prayers more than anything and as many have messaged us asking how to help in this battle this would be a very real way to do that. If you feel compelled to give, we can’t express our gratitude enough and anything helps. To follow our journey through this valley we have set up a page entitled ‘Stacey’s Prayers and updates page’ on her Facebook. Thank you so much, we are so grateful.