Gabe Grunewald Says She Did Not Respond To Chemo, Asks Community For Help

Gabe Grunewald Says She Did Not Respond To Chemo, Asks Community For Help

Gabe Grunewald's body has not responded to chemotherapy and she will start a GoFundMe to offset the cost of alternative procedures at Sloan-Kettering.

Jul 12, 2017 by Johanna Gretschel
Gabe Grunewald Says She Did Not Respond To Chemo, Asks Community For Help
Gabe Grunewald's battle with cancer has taken a new turn. The 31-year-old, who competed throughout her early rounds of chemotherapy this year including the first round of the 1500m at the USATF Championships, wrote on Instagram today that her body did not respond to the treatment.

The tumors in her liver grew and may have multiplied. She will end her chemotherapy and pursue alternative forms of treatment at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She and her husband, Justin, plan to start a fundraising campaign to help offset the costs of treatment with the aid of AthleteBiz. We will share the information for how to contribute to the fund as it becomes available.

For an in-depth read on Grunewald's battle with adenoid cystic carcinoma, her fourth bout with cancer, read this piece published by Sports Illustrated this week.


The full text of the post reads:

Do you want the good news first or the bad news? Don't you hate that question? All I want is the good news, always.

Well the good news is that my summer of chemo, after two rounds, is over! Never thought I'd have to retire #chemorunners so early, but I'm done with chemo because of the "bad news," or what I've come to consider in my unique cancer world, simply "news." I didn't respond to chemo. At all. In fact, my cancer grew a bit and I think there is a new tumor or two. Yikes. We knew chemo was far from a silver bullet for patients with ACC mets but there is always hope that your specific case will be different. I've found that one of the hardest parts of dealing with an ongoing cancer battle is building up all of your hope in a specific treatment or course of action and having that balloon of hope deflate pretty quickly… and then having to blow up another balloon all over again.

It's exhausting. But it's essential. If you have metastatic cancer you are living life on the edge, praying for a breakthrough. On the road to finding a treatment that works for you, you're probably going to fail a treatment (or quite a few treatments!) along the way. That doesn't mean you're out of the race. You just have to brush yourself off and keep running. The race we're in doesn't have a finish line or a course map. You're just running toward what you can see -- the steps directly in front of you. The rest will reveal itself in time.

The other good news is that even though I'm well off the beaten path of cancer treatments, there are still cancer centers and researchers working on new options. This is a huge blessing! For me, the next step will be enrolling in an immunotherapy trial (Hi #immunotherapyrunners!) @sloankettering and yes, hoping for the best (a miracle?) that I will respond and we can start getting this recurrence under control. There are still liver-directed therapies that could be helpful for me at some point, but I'm now fully under the care of Dr. Ho are we are still 'in it to win it' -- not giving up on the idea that we can treat and control the disease itself, rather than just manage the tumors.

More good news: I feel good. Liver is still chugging along. I'm asymptomatic. I'm getting back into running after my break. Chemo made running a huge challenge but I got it through my mini-rounds relatively unscathed. I will have hair at your weddings, @ladiahallie & @mvanness! (I wish desperately that chemo had worked for me and I would happily trade all my hair forever for less cancer, but now I'm just moving on with whatever silver lining I can possibly grasp.) AND: I'm going to Wisconsin Dells today! Cancer can [poop emoji] on me but not the fun I will be having at the waterpark celebrating Ally & Taylor's 30th! Then visiting Meg & Paul in Madison!
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Still working out the logistics and learning what the next weeks and months will look like for us. There will be travel to New York and lodging and expenses. I looked at Justin the other day during our appointment and just said, "Yeah, I guess it's time for a @gofundme." He nodded. We didn't want to do it, for various reasons, but it will be coming. Fighting cancer or really any serious disease is expensive, you're probably aware of that. When you get further off the standard treatments, it's even more expensive. So we need help. More to come on that if you wish to contribute. Whatever we don't use for funding my travel and treatments will be used to start the Gabriele Grunewald Foundation.