Mother of twins in her second bout with cancer

By Misti Strader
Tribune-Courier News Editor
mstrader@tribunecourier.com

AURORA – Just 14 months ago, 25 year-old Courtney Treas Ricchio gave birth to two beautiful, healthy baby girls.

It was admittedly the happiest day of her life. But two days later, that perfect life would be turned upside down when doctors, concerned over her high fever, stumbled upon an aggressive third-stage Hodgkin’s Lymphoma tumor that had encircled her heart, spleen and intestines.

Going back in her mind to that day Ricchio said, “The only question I remember asking the doctor was, ‘What are my chances?’”

Unable to go home with her newborns, she remained in the hospital for the next nine days undergoing several blood transfusions to prepare her body for chemotherapy treatment.
“I was so overwhelmed. I just had my babies and before I could even get home with them, I found out I had cancer,” she said. “We had to completely rearrange our lives from that moment forward.”

Ricchio’s mother, Anne Treas and family members took over the daily care of twins Isabella and Gabriella. Her husband, Alan Ricchio, was left to take over caring for his wife, who after intensive chemotherapy treatment was no longer able to physically care for herself.

“My husband has been a Godsend,” she said. “Instead of having two children, it is like he had three all at the same time. He has had to help me get dressed, help with baths and help me to eat. We were married in October of 2005, found out we were pregnant with twins in April and I was diagnosed with cancer in November. Most men would have just walked away.”

Ricchio continued to undergo chemotherapy for seven months, making weekly trips to Paducah’s Lourdes hospital. Immediately following, she was sent to Murray for radiation treatment.

“I don’t remember much of the first six months,” she said. “My memory was literally wiped out.”

Painful spinal injections of the cancer fighting drug were used to try and stifle the tumor’s growth in addition to a more routine method of inserting the medication into a port located on her chest. “Radiation was a piece of cake compared to the chemo,” she said.

“The spinal injections were the worst kind of pain I have ever felt in my life. Not even the pain of having twins comes close to comparing.” In response to the various chemicals being filtered through her body, she began to lose her hair.

“I had cut my hair to shoulder-length when it first started to fall out,” she recalled. “But by Christmas, I looked like I had mange or something.

“So, Christmas night, I sat down in the floor and had my husband shave my head. That’s when it sank in that I had cancer.

“You can tell yourself that you are not sick, but it changes things when you see in the mirror that you look like you have cancer.”

By September of 2007, nine months into her ordeal, doctors advised that her cancer appeared to be in remission.

Ricchio said her hair had begun to grow back, her chemotherapy port had been removed and she was back at home, taking care of her family as she had so longed to do.

Things were back on track for the family until sometime in late November. “I got a cold around Thanksgiving,” Ricchio said. “My neck started to swell and I was not feeling very good.”

She said she managed to get through the holidays, thinking, like most of her friends and family, that the cancer could not have possibly returned so quickly after such intensive treatment.

But they would soon discover that, indeed, it could.

On Dec. 26, Ricchio went back to the doctor to seek an explanation for the swelling. A CAT scan revealed that the cancer had in fact returned, this time in the areas of her neck and chest cavity.

Doctors speculated that a few aggressive cancer cells had managed to avoid the chemotherapy and radiation, rapidly growing in her body after the treatment had ended.

This time, doctors were taking no chances. They started Ricchio’s treatment immediately, utilizing a “chemotherapy cocktail” made up of three various types, much stronger than the ones which had been used before.

“The first treatment I took made me hallucinate for a couple of days,” she recalled. Of the new treatment’s intensity, Treas said this time, Courtney’s hair fell out almost immediately after the first dose. “It was so hard on her,” she said.

But hair loss was not what bothered Ricchio the most. “I have lost so much of my memory. Every time I take these treatments, I lose time and remembering things in my life becomes difficult.

“I would lose my hair any day of the week if it meant that I could keep my memory. I look around at pictures in my living room of my children and I might have been there when the picture was taken, but I have no recollection of that day.”
More difficult this time around was the response from doctors when Ricchio once again asked the question, “What are my chances?”

The simple reply of, “You will need lots of prayer” was a far cry from the “you have an 80 percent chance of surviving this” answer she was given the first time around.

Of everything Ricchio has faced thus far in this emotional roller-coaster ride, she said, “The worst thing is the amount of time I have had to spend in the hospital away from my husband and babies. I can’t be at home to be a wife and mother,” she said with a look of sorrow. “I am so afraid my babies are going to forget who I am.”

To help ease her concerns, a bed has been placed in Treas’ living room for Ricchio when she is home from the hospital. Though usually very ill and requiring continual care, the young mother remains visible to her daughters, too young to comprehend their mother’s illness.

Thus far, it has been 14 months of agonizing treatment, hospital visits and uncertainty for the Ricchio family.

Ricchio’s body has undergone as much chemotherapy as it can withstand. Chemicals used in the chemotherapy break down and destroy bone marrow in recipients.

In order to continue her cancer treatment, doctor’s have advised that Ricchio undergo a bone marrow transplant.

A bone marrow biopsy was recently performed and it was determined that a transplant could be completed using her own marrow, eliminating the need to find a donor. Doctors advised, however, that the procedure be completed soon.

“I remember lying on the table in the doctor’s office,” she said. “They tried to deaden me with an anesthetic before the biopsy, but due to my treatments, I have developed a high tolerance to pain medication. They just dug the needle into my bone and twisted. I could feel the pop when they hit the bone. I remember telling them then that they better have gotten what they needed, because they were never going to do that to me again.”

Aside from the emotional and physical strain the family has been enduring, the financial strain is certainly taking its toll as well.

While Ricchio was undergoing a chemotherapy treatment in Paducah one afternoon, she remembers her phone ringing.

“I answered and it was someone from the state telling me that my medical card would no longer cover my treatments. They said that a recent raise my husband had gotten at work put us over the income qualification limit by $30 per year. Since then, we have been on our own in paying the medical bills.”

To make matters worse, Ricchio was not able to be added to her husband’s insurance as they deemed her illness a pre-existing condition.

She indicated that one month’s worth of her required prescriptions costs the family more than $500, paid out-of-pocket and told of a recent bill from the hospital that reflected a charge of $42,000 for just one of her chemotherapy treatments.

“I had to laugh when I saw that bill. You know, we just can’t worry with all of that right now,” she said. “My husband keeps telling me that I have to get better and that is all that matters. We’ll worry about it when we know I am going to live.”

When asked what gives her the strength to fight self-pity and remain strong, Ricchio had a simple reply, “I don’t want anyone else but me raising my girls, and I don’t want anyone but me being a wife to my husband. I have a lot of life to live for and that is what keeps me going. I have to live, it’s not optional.”

Doctors have scheduled another CAT scan for this week to determine how much of the cancer has been affected by the treatment thus far.

At that time they will determine when the bone marrow transplant will be performed. Ricchio will have a one to three month recovery period in Louisville following the procedure.

Of her continued battle and uncertain future, Ricchio said, “If I were single with no husband and no kids, I would probably have already given up.

“My babies saved my life by coming into this world and I feel like I owe it to them to fight with everything I have to be able to spend the rest of my life taking care of them.”

For those who would like to help the Ricchio family, monetary donations can be made via a trust fund which has been set up at Heritage Bank in the name of Courtney Treas Ricchio.

Other much needed items include sizes 3 and 4 diapers, baby toiletries, size 18 month clothing and gas cards to help with the family’s fuel expenses. Material donations can be dropped at the Trib office at 100 West 11th Street in Benton Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.