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All friends...please read below the gut wrenching story of a fantastic family fighting for the life they have built together.. PLEASE donate if you can but if you can't please at least vote for our friend Jayme...

It’s not a competition Brenda Chmiliar wanted to enter. But what choice did she have?

The Maple Ridge mother has entered an online essay contest that could result in a potentially life-saving treatment for her husband, Jayme, who is battling cancer.

“Sarcomatoid Myoepithelial Carcinoma – that is what the doctor called it, the mass that has taken residence in my husband’s head,” she wrote.

“We couldn’t pronounce it and little did we know that it would be the pivotal center of our lives going forward. It overshadows every day and pretty much everything we do.

“They say that cancer isn’t contagious, but we are all feeling the symptoms and it has even began spreading outside our family into our circle of friends. No one other than my husband is going to show an active PETscan, but that does not mean that what we are feeling is not caused from my husband’s cancer.

“We know as well that we are not the only family learning to deal with all of this but it doesn’t make it any easier. We are all collectively confused, scared and completely lost.”

The cancer has become Stage 4 metastasis, spreading to his lymph nodes and his lungs.

Brenda’s essay about the uncertainty of the situation has struck a chord with family, friends and people in the community.

“It isn’t my best work. I just put it out there. I tried,” she said.

If she succeeds, her husband could be eligible to receive an alternative cancer treatment. The BX Protocol isn’t available through, or covered by the B.C. health care system, and a treatment starts at $17,000.

Brenda is not yet convinced that it is effective, but Jayme is willing to try – as long as it doesn’t put his family into heavy debt.

Last week, Jayme received a tracheotomy so he could breath easier. Tumors in his windpipe had blocked his air. He also has tumors behind his sinuses.

He is scheduled to start chemotherapy and other traditional treatments this week.

“We haven’t been given a lot of reason to hope,” said Brenda. “And if you want to try to do something different, you have to have tons of money.”

His is not a common cancer, and so the path to an effective treatment is not well known. Even the most common treatments, such as for breast cancer, can have unforeseen problems.

Brenda learned about the BX Protocol contest through social media. The BX Protocol claims to be able to treat all cancer, because it targets the so-called stealth bacterium found in cancer cells, and found to be causative agent in all malignancies.

It offers hope to the Chmiliar family.

The top 20 essays have been posted on the Delta Institute website, and the public can vote for the winner.

Brenda wrote:

Sarcomatoid Myoepithelial Carcinoma -that is what the doctor called it, the mass that has taken residence in my husband’s head. We couldn’t pronounce it and little did we know that it would be the pivotal center of our lives going forward. It overshadows every day and pretty much everything we do. They say that cancer isn’t contagious, but we are all feeling the symptoms and it has even began spreading outside our family into our circle of friends. No one other than my husband is going to show an active PETscan, but that does not mean that what we are feeling is not caused from my husband’s cancer. We know as well that we are not the only family learning to deal with all of this but it doesn’t make it any easier. We are all collectively confused, scared and completely lost

These days everyone seems to have cancer, and the advances in combatting this disease are in the news daily, so what is the big deal? Why should this be so difficult and terrifying? Well in same way that the odds of winning the lottery make it so difficult to win, the odds of getting this type of Sarcomatoid Myoepithelial Carcinoma are equally rare. They don’t have a lot of cases so they have little experience and data to draw from and the data they do have offers no hope. We are in a holding pattern while my husband gets sicker and I fear by the time they come up with a plan as dismal as it may be, it will be too late.

Our diagnosis was not the first stop in this journey but the fifth as this all began from a recurrent pleomorphic adenoma -a non-cancerous growth that my husband had removed four times. He also was given radiation in attempt stop the reoccurrence between the second and third surgeries that only seemed to cause the tumor to grow more quickly. Evasive surgeries that have left his face numb, his neck depleted of many muscles required for the comfortable support of his head, and Frey’s syndrome that causes the side of his face near his ear to “salivate” (for lack of a better term) when he eats. There are also the ongoing minor symptoms of dry mouth, constant jaw and head pain that plagues him daily. To his credit not many people even know all of this as he is always a trouper and carries on without complaining. A week after this last surgery, he began to bleed violently out of his drainage incision and hand to be rushed back into emergency surgery where they had to re-open him to stop the bleeding and return his recovery to square one. I honestly, as did the first responders, think my husband was not going to make it to the hospital and that he would bleed out on our bathroom floor. He did make it, so it seems so cruel to me that the universe would save him that fate only to have him suffer a further drawn out painful demise as this growth has quickly become a stage 4 metastasis spreading to his lymph nodes and his lungs.

What qualifies him to receive a scholarship? Nothing more than anyone else who has entered into this contest, in dire need of help and hope where all other avenues have been stripped away. He is a father, a husband, a brother, an uncle, a friend like every other candidate that has been dealt this awful hand. He doesn’t think, he is any more deserving either and if it was not for us I think he would have accepted his fate and conceded long ago. He wants to be here for our two boys, and for me, so he carries on despite, having difficulty swallowing and breathing as the tumor has taken up so much space it is squeezing his throat. However, he will not do anything that will put us further into debt on the chance that it may not save him, and would instead have a lasting negative impact on us after he is gone, so I am sitting here trying to finds some way write a compelling essay to win him a chance. It is heartbreaking that in this competition, all of the losers will probably meet the same fate, they will not just lose the contest but they will probably lose their lives. In the end, it is my boys and I who want and need him, so on his behalf, if there is any chance to save him, we will beg and plead our case even if it is against other sick and dying people, as shameful as that is, because that is what this horrible cancer has done to us.

God Bless us all.

The response has been overwhelming from “an amazing amount of people,” she said.

“We had really kept my husband’s illness to ourselves.”

When people learned about it, support for the couple, and the contest “exploded,” said Brenda.

“Part of it is just Maple Ridge, and the people I’ve come into contact with through kids sports and things like that, rallying around us. It’s a great community.”

Jayme, who manages camps for industrial companies, has lived with his family in Maple Ridge for the past 14 years. He has two teen sons in minor hockey.

Brenda said her husband is bearing up well.

“He’s a trooper. He goes with it. Every new thing – he deals with it on his own.”

Brenda wants to win the contest for him.

“It would be fantastic just to have another choice – it would be great.”

If life-saving treatment is being given away, like a vacation cruise, in the name of promotion, the irony is not lost on her.

“It is heartbreaking that in this competition, all of the losers will probably meet the same fate, they will not just lose the contest but they will probably lose their lives,” she wrote.

“In the end, it is my boys and I who want and need him, so on his behalf, if there is any chance to save him, we will beg and plead our case even if it is against other sick and dying people, as shameful as that is, because that is what this horrible cancer has done to us. God bless us all.”

Vote for Jayme

• Vote and read Brenda’s entire essay at: http://www.bxprotocol.com/contest/ to provide some hope and security to family going thru a devastating illness.