The Ellen Sneddon Support Crew

This is a picture I took of Julio's aunt Vicky and his cousin Ellen at Alex's wedding last year.

"Ellen was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC) last Tuesday (July 28, 2009). This type of breast cancer is a rare but very aggressive type of breast cancer that usually grows rapidly and often spreads to other parts of the body. They originally thought it was some sort of infection and she was given antibiotics to treat it, which she ended up being allergic to. On Tuesday they performed a biopsy and gave the diagnosis of IBC. The tumor is too large to remove surgically, so they will do several rounds of Chemotherapy to try and shrink the tumor and then remove it. IBC is sometimes treated with hormone therapy when the tumor feeds off of estrogen. This is unfortunately not an option, Ellen tested negative for estrogen, so the tumor is not feeding off of estrogen so hormone therapy would have no effect on it.

On Friday, (July 31st) Ellen had a port-catheter inserted into her chest. This acts as like a permanent IV for the chemotherapy treatments.

Chemotherapy starts on Thursday, August 6, 2009. " (quoted Shantell Sneddon)

Please keep her in your prayers. She is keeping a positive attitude but she is going to have a very difficult road ahead of her and needs all the support, no matter how little, she can get. Even if you don't know her, please drop by the blog that her family has set up for her and comment something uplifting... The Ellen Sneddon Support Crew