Yarnall’s Cancer Battle

Celeste Yarnall, Star Trek: The Apple‘s Martha Landon, is in the fight of her life.

The actress has been fighting ovarian cancer since last year.

Yarnall was diagnosed with primary peritoneal cancer in November of 2014. She had an eight hour surgery, followed by six rounds of chemo. Due to the nature of the cancer and lack of mainstream options, she is also exploring alternative medicine.

“I didn’t know when I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer just how devastating this form of cancer actually is,” said Yarnall. “Before my eight-hour surgery, my doctor made a preliminary diagnosis of primary peritoneal cancer, but when the pathology report came back he could see the origin was a small tumor on each of my ovaries and then it invaded my peritoneum.”

“We all know that just the word cancer itself is so traumatic, but I think I approached the diagnosis, the surgery and the chemo pretty bravely,” said Yarnall. Her approach included educating herself regarding her type of cancer and the treatments available for it.

Yarnall is looking for help from fans as the costs for the treatments, especially the alternative therapies (which aren’t covered by insurance), are expensive. “I hope to beat these devastating odds and even write about how I did it — but I still I need your help to survive in order to do so,” she said. “My alternative therapies are very costly and not covered by my insurance — as are so many things that we get bills for, even from the mainstream medical treatments. I need these alternative protocols because the traditional treatments such as chemo don’t offer much hope. The best hope comes from a good surgery outcome in the first place. When we research cancer we find that the traditional protocols such as chemo (I have now completed six rounds) seem to accelerate the chances of the cancer returning, even though the initial response to these toxic drugs seems encouraging.”

Yesterday, Yarnall got more bad news. “Just got a call from one of the doctors and here comes the scary/bad news bit,” she said. “Apparently the CAT scan found a blood clot, actually two of them close together in my veins in my pelvis which is next to a mass that they think is a lymphocyst but they will not know for sure until they go in during the hernia surgery and get it out and off to pathology.

“I have to go back to Cedars on Thursday to schedule an out patient procedure where they will put something like a tiny little basket/filter in my vein in my thigh to prevent the clot which is known as a DVT (deep vein thrombosis) from going to my heart.”

The injections will continue for half a year, and a new surgery will take place next month. “I just about fainted with this phone call but I am keeping it together because the doctors promised this will all be handled,” said Yarnall.

To read her story, and to donate to Yarnall’s GoFundMe page, head to the link located here.

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