Walter Farrington and his fiancé, Jessica Holden, are originally from Massachusetts but moved to Ruskin in 2015.
“We packed our whole life up and left family and friends behind to start a new life in the Sunshine State,” Holden said. “We have four boys. Wyatt is 12, Walter is 8, Westin is 5 and Wilder is 15 months. Everything was going great down here. About two years ago, our son Westin was diagnosed with a rare type of diabetes, insipidus, and also with a rare form of brain cancer. Westin went through a tough year of chemotherapy treatments, but he is now a thriving, energetic 5-year-old.”
The couple thought they could finally sit back and breathe a sigh of relief because their son Westin was doing well.
“He went in to have it checked out, and while he was there, they did a CT scan and found a mass in his frontal lobe,” Holden said. “The doctors didn’t like what they saw, so they sent Walter in for an MRI. They ended up finding a tumor and immediately got him in for brain surgery to remove the tumor for a biopsy. The biopsy was sent out and we found out that the tumor was malignant, but they still wanted to run further tests to find out what type of cancer we were dealing with.”
The couple waited on edge for weeks for the results to come back.
“We got the results back a few days after Christmas and found out that he was being diagnosed with glioblastoma,” Holden said. “We had already known that this type of cancer was very aggressive, so when we got the diagnosis, we were obviously devastated. We knew that most people diagnosed with this cancer only typically live between 12-18 months. So many things have run through our minds since that day.”
Holden began to worry about their children and them not having their dad around to watch them grow into men, graduate, get married and have kids of their own.
“We worry about all of the things that we had planned for our lives that are now being cut short,” Holden said. “This has completely changed the course of our lives.”
The couple started a GoFundMe fundraiser to help with their increasing medical bills since Farrington can no longer work.
“It’s been really hard on him so far,” Holden said. “Walter has always been a planner. He wants to make sure that in the future, if and when he does pass on, that the boys and I aren’t left with massive medical bills. I am a stay-at-home mom, so with Walter out of work, we have no income.”
If you would like to help Farrington, you can make a donation to his fundraiser at https://gofund.me/f3e10a05.
