Sean C. Morgan
A Sweet Home man fighting a physical battle against cancer has found that battle has also come with a cost, leaving him and his family struggling financially.
Various community members have stepped up to help Shaun Bickford, who is suffering from a rare form of leukemia, including staff members at Little Promises and others, who are helping him out and have already raised thousands of dollars.
Friday and Saturday, Little Promises hosted a sale of second-hand items and flowers donated by Hart Nursery of Jefferson.
The Oregon Jamboree has provided two 2013 three-day VIP tickets with six Sweet Spot passes for a raffle. Tickets are $5 each or six for $25. The drawing will be held on June 23. Information is available at oregonjamboree.com and at the Jamboree’s Facebook page.
Donations may be given directly to Key Bank in Bickford’s name.
Bickford, 32, suffers from Burkitt’s lymphoma, a rare systemic cancer. The next step in treatment is a bone marrow transplant on June 11.
The illness first manifested itself with pain on his left side, he said.
“I first noticed it in my left arm and leg but didn’t know what it was,” Bickford said. “The doctors around here didn’t recognize it.”
The original diagnosis was strained muscles, Bickford said, and a tumor in his side he believed may have been a hernia was believed to be a fatty cyst. That was in October.
“I’m a machinist,” said Bickford, who works at Wah Chang in Albany. “I use my arms at work. It was a constant pain. One night at work, I was moving a guide on one of the machines I was running. My arm just snapped. I thought I dislocated my shoulder.”
His supervisor took him to the hospital, and after a couple of hours, the doctor found a break in his arm. He had actually broken his left humerus.
The doctor told Bickford he was a healthy young man, and his arm shouldn’t have broken like that. He referred Bickford to an orthopedic oncologist at Oregon Health Sciences University.
In early December, after a biopsy and CT scan, he learned he had cancer. He was admitted to the Knight Cancer Institute. Tests there revealed a tumor 12 inches long in his leg and a total of five throughout his body.
An aggressive cancer, Bickford’s doctor responded with an aggressive form of chemotherapy six times.
“It completely took away the original tumors,” Bickford said. “But about three weeks later I got out of the shower. When I was drying off, I found a sore spot in my arm I didn’t recognize.”
A biopsy showed it was Burkitt’s lymphoma. Bickford went under a chemo treatment that lasted 24 hours per day over five days.
“I had to take three weeks off in between chemotherapy treatments,” Bickford said. The treatment was ineffective.
The tumor was getting sorer, growing and spreading. A test showed it had spread across his chest. Radiation treatment five days a week for 20 days was effective.
“It’s broken the tumor down and took the tumors completely out of the chest,” he said. He finished the radiation therapy last Wednesday. Next he will go back into the hospital on June 3 to prepare for the transplant.
Bickford has insurance, but it doesn’t cover everything, he said. “I’m on disability right now, which is 70 percent of my wage. The bills don’t go away.”
He also incurs costs living in Portland during treatment and must pay some medical bills, he said. That’s making it tough to make ends meet. With so many bills, he is uncertain how much his family will need.
That’s where the community has stepped in.
“This is amazing what the community has done,” said a grateful Bickford. “I can’t thank everybody enough. There’s no words that can describe how I’m feeling right now.”
“It’s overwhelming,” said his wife, Carissa Bickford.
The Bickfords have a son, Cohen Nivers, 5, who is attending Little Promises.
Lindsay Walker, a staff member at Little Promises, said the Bickford family’s situation is “personal” for her.
Her grandparents lived by Bickford’s parents, and they grew up next to each other. Also, her family has been through a similar experience.
The idea for a sale came from staff members Lori Juza and Laurel Hemphill, she said. Little Promises staff members were talking about different ideas to raise money for the Bickford family and came up with the idea of having a sale.
Results of the fund-raising effort will be available at a later date, she said.
“Our kids are our family,” Walker said. “So anything we can do to help them.”