My name is John and I was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia in September of 2023. I was working in EMS full-time while also working on my Associates Degree in paramedicine when all of a sudden I realized something was wrong with my body. I had a lot of unexplainable bruises on my body as well as lots of fatigue, night sweats, loss of appetite and more. I contacted my doctor to be seen and after they did blood work I was quickly referred to a pediatric hematology group and was seen by them a day later. Everything happened so quickly. When I was having my appointment in their office, I got the news nobody ever wants to hear – you have cancer. I was soon to go from the one who took care of patients to becoming one and being treated by others. I was immediately hospitalized to start induction treatment. That lasted about a month and I spent my 19th birthday in the hospital. Throughout treatment I suffered many complications including a thrombosis in my brain, a DVT in my right arm, a pulmonary embolism, COVID, and pancreatitis. Not only that, through all of this during one of my scans a tumor on my liver was incidentally spotted. I would later have to get a biopsy which would come back inconclusive. This tumor is non related to
my current leukemia diagnosis. The decision was made for me to have a partial liver resection alongside having my gallbladder removed so that they can cut the tumor out of me and do further testing on it. Luckily the surgery was a success and the tumor was removed and after further testing, it was revealed to be currently benign, although there were different spots of the tumor that were starting to turn malignant in a form of a primary liver cancer called HCC. Luckily my surgeon got clean margins around the tumor and it was contained locally because it is believed that I was probably less then a year out from the tumor being completely malignant and a new form of a primary malignancy. It’s been one crazy year for me which leads me to today!
John’s LifeList:
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Go to a Celtics game and meet the team