My mother Tina Lavoie who was only 56 on Feb 9, 2008 passed away on Sunday May 4th, 2008 after the longest fight of her life. Anyone who knew her would say she had the biggest heart, was most kind, funny, and no one ever had a negative thing to say about her.

This cancer was number four for her. She first had Hodgkin's Disease when she was 29 years old in the year of 1981 and again 7 years later to the day at 36 years old. Several years passed and in 2002 she decided she wanted to get out of the house so she began working at a local lumber store a few hours every week. She started to get a pain in her right hip which then led to her limping. She just thought it was from the hard floors and walking a lot.

She saw her medical doctor and was told it was arthritis. She was to exercise and it would go away or possibly padgets disease which would need a hip replacement but never pushed further testing. The Dr. also said to try physical therapy and she believed him as he was a family friend.

Several years had passed, she got worse and worse. The pain was so intense she kept saying she just wanted to die. I did not want to hear that so we got a second opinion.  She was on so many pain pills she just wasn’t herself. The pharmacist said the pills were maxed out in her system and it was doing nothing for the pain except making her hate her skin and body. One doctor advised "half the hip and the right leg has to come off for sure" (hemipelvectomy) and the other said "we will see when we get in there what we can do." After going back and forth and her wanting to live for my son (the love of her life), she agreed to do the surgery.  The surgery was scheduled for Tuesday, Jan 9, 2006. However, on that Friday night the pain was so severe and unbearable I took her to the local ER where she was admitted for pain control and she was then transported by ambulance to the hospital where 3 days later she was scheduled for surgery. After several hours in surgery the Dr. came out and said the leg had been removed but there was a thin layer of normal cells so it looked to be alright. We finally had a sense of relief! ! It wasn't ending there though...it just continued on...

The next day the nurse left an ice pack on her wound, which caused a second surgery to reconstruct the “dead flap”. She had to wear a “bear hugger” (which was warm air blowing on her wound that they usually use for frost bite) I kept asking if I could donate my blood as we were a match but they said it would be several hundreds of dollars. I stopped donating my blood as I was faithful every 60 days or so. While she was in the second surgery they perforated her bowel and never told us. They just put a mesh in which later we found out caused her several more problems. After being in the hospital from Jan to March of 2007 she was transferred to our local hospital for rehab.

She worked hard, had such a great attitude and just wanted to go home. 
A few weeks passed, we made the house “handicap ready” with a hospital bed, camode, ramps, bathroom railings and brought her home.  She had a wound vac on for several weeks which was used to heal her wound quicker. A physical therapist came to the house a few times a week to keep her upper body strength up and to teach her how to get in and out of her camper as we had plans to take my son Anthony Salvatore to Disney. Shortly after our trip to Disney she started having difficulty breathing.

After Ct scans, biopsies and many tests our worse fears came true once again. The chondrosarcoma spread not only to one but both lungs, not just one large tumor but several on top of each other. Her primary care doctor suggested a research study in Boston and we did that for 2 months. We found out October 5, 2007 it was making her worse so she went to the local hospital that night   with breathing difficulties and came home on permanent oxygen. It took several weeks to get her stable and her life had changed dramatically but her positive attitude was amazing! So many complications kept coming up but she fought to the very end and wanted to live.

We prayed for a miracle, and we even tried a healer but we were not ready to let her go. On Wednesday April 30, 2008 we went to the doctor for a Ct scan, and he said the chemo wasn’t working and asked if she wanted to be in the hospital or at home to pass away. She chose to be home with her family and close friends. He said 1 or 2 weeks but by Friday May 2, 2008 she made a turn for the worse and hospice was called in.  By Friday night we told her it was ok to let go. We each had private time with her, soon after her body started shutting down.

Sunday morning May 4, 2008 she was ready to leave us go and went home to heaven. It was her positive outlook that made her stay here for so long. We sadly miss her and always will!!  Her cremated leg was buried with her so we are happy she is whole now in Heaven with Jesus Christ. She is shining now as she deserves.

If it takes the rest of my life, I will research, be an advocate, fight, talk to others or whatever it takes to find out why chondromsarcoma took my mothers life at such a young age. I will find an answer to this cancer so that others will not have to go through with the pain and suffering she went through. I set this fund up as I know this is what she would have wanted.

photosbynatalie@yahoo.com
203-470-8051