“There are moments when troubles enter our lives, and we can do nothing to avoid them. But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them will we understand why they were there.” - Paulo Coelho

Feburary 14th 2021, Valentine's Day instead of a day of celebration it was the beginning of a very long and difficult road for Tracy. That morning he woke up and found that the area behind his collarbone was swollen up the size of a tennis ball. We instantly started running through a list of what we thought it could be but were coming up empty handed. He didn't feel sick, no fever, no cough, heck he said it didn't even hurt. Now anyone that knows Tracy knows he's not a huge fan of doctors, he never has been as long as I have known him but both knew he needed to go. He agreed to go to Urgent Care. Looking back through all we've been through, the lady that saw him there deserves an award & so much more. She was extremely concerned & after checking him out sent us straight to the E.R. to get soft tissue scans done. Unfortunately the E.R. did not agree & wouldn't order a scan. In fact he spent less than 10 minutes with us, told Tracy it had to be some sort of infection & sent him home with a bottle of antibiotics.

A week rolls by of Tracy taking the antibiotics exactly as prescribed & instead of the swelling decreasing it had increased & begun to hurt. I convinced him to go to a different E.R. to try to press them for scans. We were able to get a cat scan of the area which showed considerable swelling of several of his lyphnodes. Unfortunately the doctor assumed it was an infection as well, said the swelling would go down in a few months and sent Tracy on his way. Antibiotics were finished & two more primary doctors visits with the same conclusion, we just resigned ourselves to the diagnosis & waited for the swelling to go down.

Unfortunately it never did & at the end of July we got a very unexpected phone call. Tracy's primary doctor had finally gotten sent the scans from Feburary. Why it took so unbelievably long is beyond me. His doctor personally called him to tell him he needed to see someone asap, that it looked like cancer, lymphoma to be exact.

We have been very very fortunate to live near Moffitt Cancer Research Center. On August 10th Tracy was seen & was given the possible diagnosis of Lymphoma. After a biopsy it was confirmed he had Hodgkin's Lymphoma a blood cancer & after a Pet-Ct scan it was confirmed to be stage 3. The cancer had spread to both sides of his body, between his lungs and into his abdomen. September 9th he started 6 month of Chemo treatments, going once a week for 12 treatments. It was a very long hard road for Tracy but he did awesome. He kept head up & did his best to stay positive. Feburary 9th Tracy had his last Chemo session & March 9th he had another Pet-Ct Scan with the amazing news of full remission!

Tracy took a couple months to recover from chemo before he was going to go back to work. Unfortunately he had lost a lot of weight during his treatments as well as muscle mass & strength. At his lowest Tracy weighed right at 121 pounds & would get winded with very little activity. He recovered fairly quickly & planned to head back to work in the beginning of July.

June 24th he was scheduled for a ct-scan to keep track of how he is doing. We expected an all clear but it wasn't the news we got. Unfortunately several of his lyphnodes have grown in size again. They also found a mass in his abdomen that could be a reoccurrence but were told they can not rule out another disease at this point. As well as a cyst on the nerves of his spinal cord. This was not the news we expected or wanted especially so soon after getting an all clear. While I know Tracy will fight like hell & beat it again, the road ahead is uncertain & extreamly scary.

I don’t want finances distracting him from the important work of getting healthy and fully recovering. While Tracy does have insurance helping him, there are so many health and personal expenses that aren’t covered. So, I have created this GoFundMe to support Tracy with a goal of easing the financial burden as much as I can. I want Tracy to continue focusing on the fight and the recovery. Any money we raise will go towards his medical and care expenses.

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” - Haruki Murakami