On March 24th Spencer went to the dermatologist and had a mole removed in the crease of his armpit to have it tested. They later called to say it was melanoma (cancerous) and was down growing. Meaning it’s growing inward from the surface of his skin. The dermatologist and surgeon were highly concerned. Spencer had surgery April 29th to remove more of the underlying tumor and have a sentinel lymph node biopsy. They inject dye and find the closest lymph nodes to remove and send to pathology. They removed three. On May 6th Spencer met with the surgeon and the results are Stage III C Metastatic Melanoma. May 11th Spencer had his MRI and PET Scan which picked up a 7mm spot under his left peck. His oncologist wanted to err on the side of caution and start Spencer on immunotherapy asap. The plan was two meds through IV every three weeks for twelve weeks. Then go down to one med for nine months after that. He concurred it was Stage III C Metastatic Melanoma. They will evaluate the 7mm spot at the end of the first twelve weeks to see if surgical measures should be taken. May 23rd was Spencer’s first immunotherapy treatment and the med team had told him there probably wouldn’t be a lot of side effects the first round. However, that next Monday he wasn’t feeling 100% and things started to go downhill. May 29th Spencer landed in the ER because of dehydration and a spiked fever 103, had a horrible rash on top of a whole list of other things. The ER said he had an infection in the arm he had surgery on. (Cellulitis) He also had some lymphedema going on as well as some things running high in his bloodwork. There’s concern about his liver. He got sent home after a battery of tests and some antibiotics. The week of June 9th, after days of being on antibiotics, still being very sick and another oncology appointment, they decided it probably wasn’t an infection but rather his immune system in hyper overdrive because of the immunotherapy. (Kind of like having an onslaught of autoimmune diseases all at once). They started him on a high dose of steroids for a 5-6 week span. Since the steroids counteract the immunotherapy, he can not do another round of immunotherapy until the steroid treatment is complete. While he was on the high dose of steroids he was feeling much better! Now that they have him starting to taper off of the steroids the symptoms have started to come back again. Very fatigued, nauseous, hot all the time, and can’t eat very much. It’s been weekly appointments and constant lab work to try and figure out what the best course of action will be.
Spencer only gets paid when he goes to work, meaning no paid vacation time and no paid sick days. With all of these appointments and days where he just can’t get out of bed he’s missed days of work and the medical bills have started rolling in. The EOB for his first immunotherapy treatment was $171,000, so far insurance has only covered $110,000 of that. So any sort of donation/support is greatly appreciated! We will continue to update everyone on this journey when things happen!
THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!
