Lori Knutson shares her story:

Here is the latest update of my health issues that I've been going through recently. To date, I've had 73 surgeries starting decades ago with ulcerative colitis (an autoimmune disease). It was a severe case with several surgeries due to numerous complications. Eventually, I was air flighted to Mayo clinic in Rochester after an internal rupture that led to peritonitis. This serious infection led to a long battle with many surgeries and an extended hospital stay in Rochester. They removed my entire large intestine and seven feet of my small intestine.

A few years ago, the autoimmune disease led to a broken ankle. The surgery resulted with a staph infection and sepsis leading to another long hospital stay. I battled the infections for two years trying to save my lower leg but eventually the bone disintegrated enough where they had to amputate my leg from the knee down. Months later, I broke my other ankle, another result of autoimmune disease. Due to the staff infection history, the surgeon was reluctant to do traditional surgery electing to set the ankle the old-fashioned way externally with rods and rings. Unfortunately, my leg healed very badly, and I've been in a wheelchair ever since.

Last October, I was eating and started choking on some food. After a trip to the ER and several tests, they did a GI scope and found a massive tumor in my esophagus. The biopsies came back that it was malignant squamous cell carcinoma. Avera oncology determined the best action was five weeks of chemo and radiation. Everything went well and a Pet Scan in February which showed everything was good in the radiated area. They followed up with another upper GI endoscopy, at my insistence, which unfortunately showed three little bumps above the area radiated. Biopsies determined it was squamous cell carcinoma. The surgeon thought he could do surgery and remove the tumor because we caught it so early. He elected not to do the surgery because it was too close to the sphincter and referred me to Mayo clinic. They accomplished an upper GI to take their own biopsies, and they came up with the same results. They set me up with the surgeon who's one of the best in the world. The surgery took him three hours to remove the mass because it was such a large area and a very delicate surgery. Pathology came back that there was one deeper spot with lymphatic invasion which means it could invade the lymph nodes. The plan now is 6 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy all over again but this time it will be daily in Rochester. Fortunately, they have a Proton Laser, an advanced highly precise form of radiation which targets the tumor but minimizes the radiation to surrounding tissue. Thank God they have a Proton Radiation machine there. With all your prayers, I know I can beat this. I've beaten everything else and with God's help plan to beat this too. I can't thank you all enough for everything that you are doing for Ronnie and I. Thanks so much to Blue and Penny and everybody else that's putting this together, I can't thank you enough, we are so lucky to have such GREAT friends and family.

All your prayers will be so greatly appreciated, I know the power of prayer can absolutely help us beat this!

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