Story
Our 14-year-old daughter, Austen Mary, is a beautiful, fun-loving young girl. She loves school, her friends, theater, reading, baking, Jiu-Jitsu and her dog, Goose. She is not just our daughter, but a sister to two brothers, a cousin to many, a niece, a granddaughter, a great granddaughter and a beautiful soul.
In early February of this year, a trip to urgent care for back pain led to the discovery of a large tumor on her right kidney. After a few weeks of staying in the hospital, numerous test results and biopsy samples being sent across the country, the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins both came to the conclusion that Austen Mary has TFE3 Rearranged PEComa, an extremely rare type of cancer that had progressed to stage 4.
The main tumor, on Austen Mary’s kidney is large, extending into her heart and liver with metastases in her liver, lungs and lymph nodes. The complications have been numerous; extreme fatigue, weight loss, mobility loss and pain to the point we can’t even give her a hug just to name a few.
Since that day in February, we have spent countless hours on phone calls and emails to doctors and hospitals across the world looking for information, solutions and answers. The end result is that there is currently no known standard treatment for Austen Mary’s specific type of cancer.
In our search for a cure, we have found the Williams Cancer Institute. A US based practice that performs procedures in Mexico. Williams offers intra-tumoral immunotherapy, where immunotherapy drugs are injected directly into the tumor along with procedures meant to help teach the immune system to recognize and attack the cancer directly. This type of therapy is very expensive, and not covered under insurance. As her parents we simply cannot look Austen Mary in the eyes and tell her there is nothing we can do for her, therefore we want to do everything in our power to pursue a cure at Williams Institute. This is where we need your help.
The initial visit, to “prime” the tumor and start the immune system boosting is $105,000. After that, we would need to return every three to four weeks for treatment, each follow-on visit costing $49,000. Williams has said a minimum of 4 follow-on visits would be needed but likely she will need 8 in total, due to the size of her tumor. Our cost estimate, for just the treatment program (not including travel/lodging to Mexico 6-10 times), ranges from $301,000-$497,000.
We want to save Austen Mary’s life and we think this is the best option to help us do that. We humbly ask you to donate any amount you can to help us get her this treatment. We greatly appreciate you supporting Austen Mary and our family. If you are unable to donate at this time, please still share with your friends and family and on your social media pages!
Thank you!
The Fields Family
My brother-in-law made a great video of Austen Mary!
For updates please follow Austen Mary Updates on Facebook.
Organizers :
Co-organized
Cyndi Fields and Lindsay Allmeyer are organizing this fundraiser.