With No Promise Of Tomorrow, Family Of Terminally Ill Brick Woman Lives In The Now

The photos look like those from any other family vacation. Horseback riding, ziplining through the trees, hanging out on the beach with friends.

Smiling moments captured. Memories etched digitally, where they will forever be just a few clicks away.

These are memories Tracy and Anthony Verdura are cherishing right now -- memories they are making with their 9-year-old daughter, Madison. Memories of a final family vacation that Tracy hopes will comfort both her husband and daughter in the more difficult days that lie ahead.

Tracy Verdura has inoperable oral squamous cell carcinoma in her jaw.

Tracy, 44, has been battling the cancer since April 2014, when it was finally diagnosed after months of dealing with what she and her dentist believed was a tooth infection. Twelve hours of surgery -- to remove part of her jaw and reconstruct it -- plus radiation and chemotherapy ensued.

For six months, she was cancer-free. The family planned a vacation with friends to celebrate.

Then in April, they got the news that the cancer was back. Another 15-hour surgery was scheduled over spring break so that friends -- who Anthony said have been an amazing support system -- could be available. The doctors removed the tumor and another section of her jaw bone, and reconstructed the hinge in her mouth. While she was undergoing chemotherapy to fight the recurrence, the Verduras received the devastating news that Tracy’s cancer had returned, in a much more aggressive form. And it is inoperable.

“They have told us anywhere between six and 18 months,” Anthony said.

He and Tracy are both hoping it is 18 months or even more.

“I’m losing my best friend, my wife,” Anthony said, the words catching in his throat. “Madison is going to lose her mom.”

“I want her here as long as possible,” he said.

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They met in 1993 on a blind date, set up by Anthony’s cousin, Rick Verdura, and Rick’s girlfriend. Crystal worked with Tracy at a bank in Lakewood. She told Tracy about Anthony, and how nice he was.

Anthony, a 1986 graduate of Middlesex High School, had moved to Brick with his family in 1987. Tracy, who graduated in 1988 from Patch American High School in Stuttgart, Germany, where her father was stationed with the U.S. Army, had moved to town a bit later.

Crystal and Rick -- who are now married -- kept nagging them to go out on a date, Anthony said.

“We kept putting it off,” he said, but finally he and Tracy gave in and agreed to the date at the movies, where they went to see “Jurassic Park.”

They married seven years later.

Madison came along in 2006, after Tracy and Anthony endured a pair of miscarriages, the second one at 20 weeks’ gestation.

“The baby was far enough along that they could tell us it was a girl,” he said. They had planned to name a girl Penelope.

On one of the trips to Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, where Tracy is being treated by Dr. David Cognetti and Dr. Howard Krein, they realized they passed the hospital where Tracy was treated after the second miscarriage.

Madison, Anthony said, is their blessing.

“I had dreamed from the time I was young of having a daughter,” he said. “She is the perfect blend of both of us,” with Tracy’s attitude and Anthony’s smile. Her name -- Madison Courtney -- honors Tracy’s roots.

“Tracy was born in Madison General Hospital in Madsion, Wisconsin,” the same city where Tracy’s mother, Donna, was born. Courtney is Tracy’s maiden name.

And the family is huge fans of the Wisconsin Badgers as a result. They’re also fans of Notre Dame, where Tracy’s uncle was the head of the grounds department. “We’ve been able to tour the stadium there,” Anthony said.

The family has a 16-year-old cat, T.J. and more recently acquired a Maltese.

“They roped me in,” Anthony said with a chuckle. Tracy would take Madison to look at puppies every so often, trying to convince him.

“They wore me down,” he said, and two years ago the Maltese joined the family. They named her Penelope, a deliberate decision, he said, a tip of the hat to the daughter they lost.

* * * * * * * *

The last 18 months have been a combination of sucker punches and what Anthony says have been absolutely humbling displays of kindness by friends and strangers alike.

Not long after Tracy’s initial diagnosis and surgery, her mother, Donna, died after a long illness. Then Anthony’s father, Jorge, who had lymphoma, and his sister, Joanne, died in short succession.

Tracy was extremely close to Donna, and though her mother lived in Palmetto, Fla., they talked daily, Anthony said. Anthony, meanwhile, was extremely close to his father. Anthony, who is on permanent disability now due to a back injury suffered in 1995, worked as a heavy diesel mechanic for several years, working with his dad every day to try to help his dad get to the point he could retire.

“I dedicated myself to that,” he said. After that, he was a working foreman for a general contractor, working for a friend. A fusion and two screws in his back, however, were painful, and over time he realized he couldn’t do the 20-hour days of snowplowing or the hard work involved in building custom homes any longer and, two years ago, sought disability.

“I was on borrowed time,” he said.

It wasn’t an easy decision for a man who has always prided himself on being able to take care of his family.

“I was finally approved (for disability payments) earlier this year,” Anthony said.

The upside to being out on disability -- one of the few -- has been the fact that he has been able to be home to be Tracy’s caretaker, ensuring that she eats, taking her for treatments, as well as taking care of the day-to-day things like laundry and cooking when Tracy isn’t feeling up to it.

Tracy continues to receive chemotherapy to try to extend her life -- she just finished up one course of it and has a PET scan scheduled for Monday to check on the status of the cancer before the next course begins, he said. Between the chemotherapy and medication to manage pain from nerve damage that she’s suffered as a result of all the treatments, there are some days where she simply must rest.

Other days, Tracy takes care of as much as she can, he said, including paying bills and making breakfast and lunch for Madison before she goes to school.

“I fight every day for both of them,” Tracy said, “but more for her because she is so young to have to deal with this. I just recently got a tattoo which is on my Facebook page that says, ’I will fight,’ because that’s all I can do.”

One thing that has helped sustain them both, Anthony said, has been an outpouring of love and support from friends and strangers.

One of their biggest supporters has been Michelle Hulsart, the owner of Standing Ovations School of Dance, where Madison has been taking dance lessons.

“When Tracy was going through chemotherapy the first time, they (Hulsart and the families at the dance studio) organized and brought meals five nights a week for six straight weeks,” he said. Hulsart has worked to ensure that Madison has kept dancing, despite intense financial challenges the family has faced with Tracy being forced to quit working because of her illness.

“We are just skimming the surface,” just barely paying the bills, he said. The Verduras’ mortgage is low, he said, because they have lived in their home in the Cedarwood Park development for 20 years. But getting by on disability has left room for little else.

“I’m not talking about lavish things,” he said. “Just going out to dinner on a Friday night with friends, or to breakfast on a Sunday morning.”

He said they think twice about using gas -- something they didn’t worry about initially with Tracy’s illness: In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Tracy and a friend loaded up the Verduras’ Tahoe with bottled water and ice at the nearby Brick PAL building and drove down to the Baywood section to deliver it to residents there, after the area was hard-hit when the flood of ocean water from the Mantoloking breach swamped dozens of the bayside area’s homes.

Even birthday party invitations for Madison are fraught with stress, he said. “I don’t want to tell her she can’t go, but I don’t want to send her without a birthday present.”

He knows finances will be even tighter when Tracy is gone. There is no life insurance policy on Tracy, he said.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to us,” Anthony said, referring to himself and Madison. “I don’t even know what our living situation is going to be.”

But he and Tracy push forward, he said.

“Even though today seems like a tough day, we have tougher days ahead,” he said. “We try to get through.”

Their friends have been a huge help in that regard. Mark and Tricia Mastrojohn, their friends of 25 years, started a GoFundme campaign to help the Verduras. It paid off their credit card debt, Anthony said. Mark texts Tracy every night at 8, just to remind her she is loved, Anthony said.

“He sets his alarm to make sure he does it,” Anthony said.

Hulsart, who annually hosts a fundraiser at the dance school called Avery’s Carnival, is dedicating a portion of the proceeds from this Sunday’s carnival to the Verduras. (The carnival runs from 1 to 5 p.m. at the school on Mantoloking Road in Brick.)

“She has been absolutely amazing,” he said.

In addition to the carnival, a group of families from the dance school started a flip-flop fundraiser, making flip-flop wreaths that families purchased and creating a flip-flop patch that moved from home to home, not only around Brick but to homes in Jackson, Howell and Toms River as well, all bearing the hashtag #fightinginflipflops.

“Jennifer Gardner with her family and the Konapodas and Hankins (family) set up the Fighting in Flip Flops and drove around every night during the summer moving it,” Tracy said. That effort raised $5,000, Anthony said.

“One of the wreathes even went overseas,” he said.

And Hulsart has been more than a fundraiser, “she’s been a good friend,” he said.

And then, of course, there was the vacation.

Anthony said they have vacationed with a group of families -- the Mastrojohns, the Perrys, the Connollys, the Barcus family, and Heather and John Gardner -- in previous years, to Mexico and to North Carolina, among other trips. The group had planned a trip to Costa Rica to celebrate Tracy being cancer-free. Then Tracy learned it was back.

“We weren’t going to go,” Anthony said. “We told our friends there was just no way we could make it.”

The friends got together and chipped in to make sure the Verduras could go.

“It was the trip of a lifetime,” he said.

There were some hurdles to clear. Tracy had to be cleared to travel outside the country because her radiation treatment had caused an open cavity on her neck.

“Tracy was Jefferson’s first patient with radioactive seeds implanted in her head and neck,” Anthony said. The seeds, which had been implanted in her without surgically opening up her skin had caused an opening in the skin. The doctors signed off on the trip, which took place the first week of August, he said.

“She was able to go ziplining, horseback riding,” Anthony said. “We got some amazing pictures. We soaked every last second up,” something they never would have been able to do without their friends, he said.

“We have some really truly amazing friends and they truly deeply care for us as famiy,” he said.

It’s a support system he knows will help him and Madison through the journey that lies ahead.

* * * * * * * * * *

Anthony and Tracy said that while Madison knows her mother has cancer and is not well, they agreed not to talk specific timelines or death with her. They try to address things on Madison’s level, and talk often with the school counselor at Emma Havens Young Elementary School, where she is a fourth-grader.

“Madison talks very matter of factly about it” to the counselor, he said, who has assured them that the best thing they can do is not hide what’s going on from her.

“The more you hide from them, the more questions they have,” he said. Madison has been able to talk to Tracy’s doctors and ask them questions via Facetime on an iPad Mini they got her so she could be in touch with her parents when Tracy had to go in for surgery.

Though friends have suggested things such as a video diary for Madison to have once Tracy is gone, ”emotionally, Tracy’s not there yet,” Anthony said. She has contemplated the fact that she won’t be around to be at Madison’s wedding or to help her celebrate her Sweet 16. She tries to take in every moment now.

“I go to bed with her every night and lay there until she’s asleep, just so I can be there with her as much as I can,” Tracy said.

“We’re all scared. There’s nothing preparing anyone for this,” Anthony said. ”We’ve tried to tried to reassure her that I’m not going anywhere. Now the process is just going to happen.”

“In your 20s and 30s you think you’re invincible,” said Anthony, who turns 48 on Sunday. “You never really know your strength until you face something like this.”

And while he wants more -- “I need her here tomorrow. I want her here as long as possible,” he said -- he is grateful for the good she has brought to his life.

“I’m a homebody,” Anthony said. “My wife has had me on a plane to places I never would have been,” including Las Vegas, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Mexico. Though Anthony didn’t go with her, she traveled to Australia and New Zealand with her parents years back, going bungee jumping and posing for a photo with her father atop the Sydney arch.

“She’s gone places and made me do stuff and I can’t thank her enough,” he said. “She’s an amazing woman. She’s everything to me.”

“We’re done with all the ifs and whys and we’re just trying to get through every day,” Anthony said.

“The one thing I tell people about our journey is that at least I am being given time to tell the people I love that I love them and to make more memories with them,” Tracy said. “We never know when we will die. It could be a car accident or a heart attack, but at least I have the chance to say I love you to my family and friends every day until my last day.”

If you would like to make a donation to the GoFundme campaign to help the Verdura family with their financial challenges, click here.

(Photos courtesy Tracy and Anthony Verdura: the family on the beach in Costa Rica; her tattoo; Tracy ziplining in Costa Rica. Madison sharing a moment with one of the horses. The Verduras and their traveling family. Via Facebook: The flip flop patch at the home of one of the dance school families.)