A Request for Help from a Brother

A Message from Brother Roger West,  a  CWA member  from Local 1118 I want to start by thanking everyone for their help we really need it and appreciate it.  Whether it be, saying a little pray for her, a donation, or helping us get the “Go Fund Me page” link out, I want to say Thank You!  I really don’t know how we are going to get through this, not to mention the financial aspect, so I am so grateful to have everyone’s support.  Currently we are living in the Boston Children’s Hospital right next to her bedside for the most part and I can’t think of a place in the world that I would rather be.  She is only 2 and she needs her mommy and daddy right by her side.  Plus she is a daddy’s girl and constantly crying for daddy.  It breaks my heart, so again, I am very grateful that I can be here with her, and you are helping make it possible.  She needs all the fight we can give her, by being right by her side.  It is very important to her recovery and staying strong.  So I really want to say Thank You!  Being on FMLA, I have no income, but all the bills back home keep coming in, plus co-pays and expenses of being away from our home.  Only 1 person can stay each night with her, so we are also renting space at the Ronald McDonald house.  I am still having trouble even wrapping my head around this whole situation.  On a positive note, my baby girl Bridgette West is a fighter and we will get through this one way or another!   A quick update… Bridgette has had all of her scans, MRI’s, MIBG’s, PET, Bone Scans, and Biopsy’s.  They have confirmed that she has Differentiated Neuroblastoma.  She has 1 tumor the size of a plum in her lower left abdomen at the base of her Aorta and close to her kidney and spine.  They have confirmed that we caught it somewhat early and that it has not spread to any other parts of her body.  They have placed her in an intermediate risk category.  We are still waiting for the results of her n-myc gene amplification test; we are praying is negative, because a positive n-myc would place her into the high risk category.  The risk categories’ directly correlate to survivability.  We should have those n-myc results by the end of the week.  Today she had her dental work completed in preparation for chemotherapy.  The pulled 3 teeth, filled 2 others, and resized a crown she had previously gotten.  Chemotherapy is scheduled to start this Friday or possibly even Monday depending on how her mouth heals?  Currently the treatment plan is to have a few cycles of chemotherapy, then re-scan and see if the tumor has shrunken enough to remove it at that point.  The idea is to shrink it away from her Aorta and then resect the tumor.  Then if needed follow up with a few more cycles of chemotherapy.  If everything goes as planned, she will be cancer free, in 6 months to a year?  This is quite scary though because normally they would want to remove the tumor first and then start chemotherapy, but the best tumor surgeon in the country does not feel comfortable with its current size and location.  So we are praying the chemo does its job and the surgeon can get resected down the road.  I will try to follow up later this week once we know exactly when they are going to start the chemo and the results of her n-myc test.  I apologize for any delay in updates; I barely have anytime to do anything.  We also have a 5 year old who starts school next month and we have to make sure she doesn’t get forgotten about in the mix.  So time is very hard to come by.  I will talk to you all later.  Again thanks for the help!  The hardest part is still yet to come.  We have a long road ahead of us… The West Family Click Here to Help the West Family Please