John Mahoney Fighting Mouth Cancer

John is a hard working family man and Desert Storm Veteran who was given the news in June that his mouth biopsies came back positive for mouth cancer. The PET scan after that showed the cancer has gone into his lower jaw bone and into several lymph nodes in his neck, putting him at stage 4. John would soon be scheduled for a 19 hour long surgery to remove his lower jaw, the floor of his mouth, all of his teeth and 82 lymph nodes from his neck. His jaw was reconstructed from his right leg fibula bone, muscle and veins. Due to a blood clot in his arm post surgery John had two more small surgeries which kept him in the hospital a total of one month. He was unable to speak for several weeks with ventilator and tracheotomy. He was needing physical therapy to walk and unable to eat or drink anything by mouth for four weeks. John is now able to drink liquid and some pureed food but gets most of his nutrition from a feeding tube in his stomach. He has begun radiation and chemo therapy and will get these treatments through December. The chemo side effects have already caused damage to his hearing. John recently also found out that he may lose his job if he can not go back to work by December. Schwans has been a huge part of Johns life. He has been a dedicated employee for Schwans for 16 years and this news has been difficult to take on top of the difficulty of treatment to save his life.

These donations would help John and Shelly with medical bills, transportation to and from radiation and chemo, and also so day to day life. So they can focus on Johns fight to beat cancer.
Our mom Shelly and John have been together for almost four years,during the last four years John and his two kids have become a huge part of ours and our kids life. We all became one big family. It is difficult for us to watch John have to go through everything he has in such a short period of time.
Anything is appreciated, we are just trying to take one less thing off of the stress they have.

Thank you all for taking the time to read his story.




Before Surgery Cancer 


After Surgery 


After Sugery- everything he needed to be connected to. 


His Leg Starting To Heal


All Of His Medical Supplies He Needs At Home