After a two year journey, Saffire Love, a Powell resident, is preparing a July trip to Arizona where a cancer center could provide a path forward in treating her stage 3 osteosarcoma.

Love tried chemotherapy and radiation in hopes that the tumor would respond or shrink enough to be removable via surgery. After advocating for herself and what would work in her life, Love is now hoping  the City of Hope cancer center’s SCINTIX machine will treat the cancer.

“SCINTIX therapy is a revolutionary new type of radiation therapy that uses your own biology to deliver personalized treatment,” the SCINITX Therapy website reads. “This promising new therapy is an option for both early and late-stage cancer patients.”

Love’s tumor will be injected and the machine will check to see if the tumor responds.Assuming that it does Love will then undergo up to two weeks of consistent treatment. 

Under the traditional treatment Love was sick and her treatment was making her even more so. She was easily irritated, took it out on her friends and family and saw the effect it had on her daughter, who would ask her mom if she was going to die, she said.

“We would just be hanging out watching a movie or something, and it would just randomly come up,” Love said. “It’s different when your 5-year-old is asking you questions like that, because you’re not supposed to die, or even think about dying when your kid is 5.”

Love wants to be there for her daughter’s college graduation and other milestones.

“I got super scared that I wasn’t going to be, so I just had to pretty much just tell everyone that I was done and I just wanted to be there for them,” Love said. 

Love was first diagnosed in June 2023 after tests for an osteochondroma (a bone growth) showed the growth was malignant. Love has had osteochondromas growing up and even had one removed in high school; they always came back benign. 

“My body just likes to produce extra cells when it changed my bones,” Love said.

In April of 2023, she had consistent headaches and her primary care provider at the time told her they were growing pains, but a physician in Cody flagged a spot on her neck between her c7 and p1 vertebra. The growth was pushing these two spots apart causing headaches, dizziness and occasionally making Love black out. 

When they did a biopsy in Billings, the tests showed the growth was cancer that could not be removed by surgery. Love underwent chemotherapy alongside pills for treatment.

“It made me super sick. I didn’t want to do anything,” Love said. “I was still working full time while also being a mom and working another part time job and owning my own little business, it didn’t help at all.”

Stopping treatment was not recommended by her doctor, she said, and this led to the doctor referring her to City of Hope, a renowned cancer and life-threatening illness research organization that has helped produce a number of breakthrough cancer medications according to their webpage.

There will be travel, lodging and expense costs that come with City of Hope’s program as well as keeping the lights back on in Powell, and the community has been supportive. Amy Mann, a long-time friend of Love and owner of the K-Bar Saloon put on a dart tournament over the weekend that raised roughly $1,000, and a GoFundMe was created by Brian Edwards, a colleague of Love’s boyfriend, which has raised just over $8,000. A spaghetti dinner fundraiser was also organized for Love on June 7 at the Eagles with Snap-On, Woodward Tractor and Rental, Dustin Short, PrettyBuffalo, SWI Fence and Supply and others donating to the event. 

There have been many donations, prayers and well wishes, Love said, which at times has been hard but she does appreciate what people have been doing.

“It’s great how our community is, because they always show up,” Love said. “I was super scared because I’ve lived in Powell for a while … but, it’s just crazy to think that even people that don’t know me still showed up and supported us. It’s wild because I’m like, ‘I don’t know you one bit.”

Those who want to support Love and her family can visit gofundme.com/f/help-saffire-and-family-through-cancer-fight.