Tommy's Lifesaving Transplant Journey

At the beginning of this year, Tommy was unfortunately diagnosed with Stage 3 testicular cancer. He had surgery to help remove some of the cancer, but that was not enough for him to be cured. He had to undergo multiple rounds of BEP chemotherapy, which consisted of several months of him receiving bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin. 4 days before his 27th birthday, he was officially done with chemotherapy and we could finally say he was cancer free!

That excitement was short lived however, less than a month later he started noticing he was having trouble breathing. After meeting with a pulmonologist, it was determined that he was developing bleomycin induced pulmonary toxicity. Essentially, the chemotherapy medication that was meant to save his life killed the cancer cells, but it also severely damaged the cells in his lungs as well. He was started on medications that were supposed to slow the progression of the lung damage but nothing was working.

On October 6th, he was admitted to the ICU in our town. He was there for almost a week, before he had to be intubated and air lifted to a larger hospital that was better equipped to handle his care.

Since October 12th, he has been intubated and attached to a ventilator. He is on a machine called ecmo, which takes his blood out of his body, adds oxygen, removes carbon dioxide, and then recirculates the blood through the body. He has had several chest tubes inserted, multiple bronchoscopies, requires a feeding tube, had to have a thoracotomy, and unfortunately the list just goes on. He has been through more this year than a person should have to deal with in their lifetime. But his fight is going to last for months more before he can feel any sort of real relief.

Since he finished chemotherapy so recently, there are only a handful of centers in the entire United States that have the resources needed for such a complex case. Northwestern in Chicago, Illinois is one of the few and has agreed to consider Tommy for lung transplant candidacy.

Sometime within the next few weeks, he will be airlifted to Chicago and his transplant journey will begin there. Honestly, his battle with cancer was an expensive one but it will not even begin to compare to the cost of this one.

Medical care that insurance will not cover, relocation costs, Immunosuppressants and other medications, gas to get to and from appointments afterwards, medical equipment (including prosthetics, as he will unfortunately be losing at least one finger due to the need he had for vasopressors during this) is all much more expensive than anyone would care for or could afford themself.

We are incredibly thankful for the support system we have had through this entire journey and hate to ask even more out of our loved ones, but if anyone feels the desire to help Tommy financially through this time we would be infinitely grateful.

Thank you so much everyone!