Deputy Courtney Ward is battling a rare form of cervical cancer and needs our help. She is currently in Maryland undergoing an immunotherapy trial in the hopes of fighting back her cancer which so far has been resistant to treatment.
Fourteen months ago, Courtney was serving the city of San Clemente as a patrol deputy. Then she was diagnosed with neuroendocrine carcinoma, an extremely rare and deadly kind of cancer.
Surgery and high doses of chemotherapy have done nothing to stop the cancer spread. Neither have 28 sessions of radiation. The cancer has since spread to her liver and her lungs.
The trial will wipe out her entire immune system with chemotherapy and then repopulate it with her own “super T-cells” in hopes that her own cells will attack the tumors.
The therapy has killed certain cancers. Courtney will be the first neuroendocrine patient to try it.
Courtney’s husband, Dave Ward, works for the County of Orange’s Public Works/Development Services and is in need of catastrophic leave donations so he can be by her side through the duration of the experimental trial.
