Hello, I’m Amber, Damien’s wife and i’m raising funds to help with Damiens medical expenses.

Here’s our story:

Looking back 6 months ago life was normal and Damien was feeling great. Then in August Damien started having fevers and night sweats. He began losing weight rapidly and having muscle cramps. He had nodules on his legs for years that every doctor dismissed as RA nodules. He was even put on immunosuppressant therapy to help with these in January of this year. After months of no success, he stopped taking the medications. Then a few months later, in August, his health began going downhill quickly. One night he was so sick he needed to go to the hospital, so we took him to The Toledo Hospital. We learned that his white blood cells were very low and his spleen & lymph nodes were enlarged. They did biopsy’s of his legs, and gave him antibiotics. They did a complete work up and ruled out tons of things but still had no answers. So as a last resort they did a bone marrow biopsy and a lymph node resection. None of that yielded any answers so after 2 weeks in the hospital they discharged him with the diagnosis Felty’s Syndrome. Within a couple of days he was really sick again, so the doctor increased his steroid dose and said his immunosuppressants would take a month to be therapeutic, so we had to be patient. When a month hit, he grew gravely ill in a matter of 24 hours, so after talking to a couple of doctors we were advised to take him quickly to The Cleveland Clinic. So we packed up our car as fast as we could and secured babysitters for our 4 young children. When we arrived in Cleveland it was very apparent he was septic, and his recent lymph node resection site was the culprit. They did a CT to confirm he had necrotizing fasciitis which by this point was life threatening, so he was rushed into emergency surgery. After the infection was cleared the doctors kept questioning the rash on his legs as it was worsening, so they sent another biopsy but this time a lot deeper. After nearly a month in Cleveland and a ton of testing they were prepping to send him home on steroids again and just see how he did since the infection was resolved. The day before his anticipated discharge date we received life shattering news. The last biopsy they took, showed an extremely rare form of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. It’s full name is Primary cutaneous gamma delta T cell lymphoma or PC-GD-TCL. They told us it is a very aggressive cancer and his overall prognosis is poor. They said a Lymphoma like this is difficult to stage but if they were to stage it he was in stage 4. We did some research and decided no matter the cost we were going to fight. He has 3 daughters to walk down the aisle someday, and we are going to do whatever it takes to make sure that happens. If you cannot donate, we understand, we appreciate prayers just as much because we know the man upstairs can hear them & will heal him.