This is Fred Buehler.  This is a difficult letter to write but it’s important to me that all of Linda’s friends and family know about Linda’s illness and her brave fight to beat it.  

 

Linda was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma in October 2023.  It was already pretty advanced when I took her to the local ER with a terrible headache.  That was our first indication of any problem.  The CT and MRI scans showed over 30 tumors in her brain plus tumors in her liver, lungs and uterus.  It was a few of the larger brain tumors that were causing the swelling in her brain and the resulting headaches.  So the doctors started her on heavy doses of steroids to reduce the swelling and the headaches stopped.  She was still seriously ill but she was then at least pain free. 

 

We went to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa for further evaluations.  They told us about some promising new cancer treatments so we began the long process of trying to cure her.  

Her doctors advised us to skip our regular trip to Hawaii this year because she needed to stay in Florida to start her cancer treatments.  Of course we were disappointed because we had been going to Hawaii every winter for nearly 20 years.  But the doctors and hospitals are better here.  Plus the air travel part of the trip would have been very difficult for her to manage.  So instead we prepared to spend our first “winter” in Florida in a very long time and she begin her treatments.  

 

Over the next few months Linda received several different kinds of treatments.  Both a week of targeted radiation treatments at Moffitt and 9 weeks of infusions of a pair of immunotherapy drugs at our local hospital.  We had high hopes the new drugs would work and that hope kept us traveling back and forth to Tampa for months of follow up evaluations.   Our hope was that the treatments would cure her.  However she also had several serious complications caused by the steroids that required more hospitalizations.  But the steroids were still necessary to prevent the headaches from returning.  The steroids caused several serious UTIs that would not respond to antibiotics and she developed type 2 diabetes.  So not only did she have widespread cancer to deal with but her general health was also failing her.

 

She fought a tough battle but in the end the cancer treatments didn’t stop the progression of the disease.  My hope now is just to keep her comfortable and pain free until the end.  After discussing it with several doctors, they all recommended hospice and that has now started.  She can continue to stay in the same room in the rehab center where she had been getting PT but the hospice nurses will begin managing all the other rehab care.  She has very good care.  

 

It is very sad that this is happening to someone who was so active and happy with all her activities.  She loved ballroom dancing and cross stitching with her friends and spent a lot of time doing both.  But the effects of the cancer prevented her from doing these activities anymore.  Paddle boarding and reading were among her other interests but they too were no longer possible due to the effects of her illness. 

 

Linda is still in the rehab center next to our local hospital in Miramar Beach, Florida about a 20 minute drive from our home.  She can have visitors at that facility during the day.  Since she began hospice last week she stopped taking the cancer medications and began taking more pain medication. She is comfortable and her pain is being managed but we expect her to continue to get worse.  

 

This has been difficult on me.  But I have a lot of friends helping me through it and I’m doing ok.  I prefer texts or emails to phone calls because I am having a difficult time controlling my emotions when talking about Linda.  But I really do appreciate everyone’s comforting words.  However we must all face the difficult truth.  The Linda we all knew and loved has already left us many weeks ago.  Now we’re just hoping to keep her comfortable while we are waiting for the inevitable to happen.  

 

We celebrated her 70th birthday in Cabo in late September with friends just weeks before her diagnosis.  Our 44th wedding anniversary is coming up this August but she probably won’t be here for it.  

 

Linda’s last dance performance was at Luna Ballroom on November 4, 2023, just days after we got the biopsy results confirming she had cancer.  I videotaped the performance with her dance partner/instructor Eric Luna and it’s available for viewing - along with other videos- using the Google Drive link below.  It was a beautiful performance and I will always treasure the video.  It’s so difficult to believe how quickly the cancer affected all parts of her life. 

 

We are both more spiritual than religious but we believe strongly in the goodness of people.  But in this world good people still die young for no good reason.  The most important part of life will always be the love of our family and friends.

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I put a large collection of photos and videos of Linda’s life out on a Google Drive for anyone to view.  The link to them is below. I shed a lot of tears while writing this letter and compiling these photos and videos but it helped me to put all of this into perspective.  Linda certainly enjoyed life to its fullest.