Mary Lynn R

Mary Lynn Rampmeyer’s

Hi Alan: thanks for the t-shirt, which i received in April. Sorry for the delay in thanking you. Since I wrote before, I have been to Indiana university hospital and saw Dr. Patrick Loehrer, an oncologist who sees a lot of thymus cancers and Dr. Kenneth Kesler, the cardiothoracic surgeon who does the surgery in most of Dr. Loehrer’s cases. it was a very enlightening visit. They explained that surgery was possible as long as a heart/lung pump was available in case there was a need to patch the blood vessels. They said that radiation would cause a lot of scar tissue and I wouldn’t get a good surgical result after radiation. Dr. Kesler was confident he could do it. My doctors at Crozer-Chester Medical Center and Fox Chase said surgery wasn’t possible at all. I was just “floored.” so, I came home and we talked about it and decided to go out there for the operation. But, my HMO wouldn’t go for it. They said there were cardiothoracic surgeons here who could do it. I did more research and found Dr. Larry Kaiser at UPenn. Long story short, I saw him on 5/23 and he will do the surgery on 6/23. I don’t know whether to be angry as hell with the surgeons here who didn’t tell me the reason they wouldn’t operate on me was because they don’t use the heart/lung pump or what! But, I don’t have the time or energy to put into anger at this point. I’m just so grateful to have found someone who feels confident that he can help me. I may need radiation after the surgery if he can’t remove the entire tumor, so I may need your t-shirt yet. In any case, I’ve worn it already, and it’s great. Thank you for your interest. I hope your wife is doing well.

therampmeyers@snip.net

Update

Mary Lynn was diagnosed with squamous cell cancer of the thymus in January.

Mary Lynn had her surgery and is doing well, even taking a vacation!

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January 2006
My name is Sherri Farnan and I am MaryLynn Rampmeyer’s daughter. I’m not sure if anyone from my family contacted you last week, but we wanted to let you know our sad news. My mom passed away on Monday night, January 16th. She had a fungal infection in her left lung in the area where part of the lobe was removed when she had her surgery to remove a thymic tumor in June of 2003. She was diagnosed with this on Dec. 16th, but prior to that did not know what was wrong. She had pain in her left arm and side of her neck for quite some time and doctors did not pick up on the infection. It was first thought that she had a recurrance of the cancer, however, after being admitted to the hospital on Nov. 15, 2005 and having 2 biopsies of her lymph nodes, it was determined that there was no cancer and that it was a fungal infection.

Sincerely, Sherri Farnan