My name is Mark Wills and I’m starting this gofundme for the benefit of Ryan Hanawalt, which many of you know of as “Meat”, and his family – beloved Wife Angie, and children, Chaise and Cadence as Ryan battles a rare form of cancer.

Ryan is finally home after spending several weeks at the Toledo Hospital and then at the University of Michigan to seek a diagnosis and treatment of this rare and aggressive form of Hepatosplenic T-Cell Lymphoma.

I’ve been given the privilege to know Ryan through work. If you know our type of work, it can be long days and hours. In those long hours, you can get to know your co-workers well because at times you see them more than you get to see your own family. Ryan and I had an immediate connection and I feel like he’s a brother from another mother… He’s a Family-man, hard worker, smart, humble, and selfless to a fault. To see Ryan go from thriving to survival mode in such a short time has been tough.

After the recent meeting with the bone marrow transplant doctor, Ryan will be receiving 3-4 more heavy doses of chemo to kill off the cancer cells. If the chemo works, they will check Ryan’s family first to see if they are a match. If a family match is not found, then they go to the international database to try and find as perfect a match as possible.

Ryan will be in the hospital for at least a month for the transplant during which the first week will be prepping him for the transplant, which means more chemo. Then after, he will be receiving immunosuppression drugs to suppress his immune system so that his body doesn’t reject the new cells. When Ryan goes home, he will need around the clock care and getting daily IV’s for 3-6 months.

Ryan’s family needs your urgent help as they face this rare and aggressive form of cancer head-on. The monies will be used to help with medical costs, housing, driving to and from appointments, and other unforeseen expenses as Ryan most likely will not be able to return to work for up to a year. Any donations that exceed what Ryan and his Family need will be donated to the research and hopeful cure for this type of cancer.

For all of us that know Ryan, (Meat) he too is rare and aggressive & he’s going to beat this!

Thank you for your help!

https://www.tcllfoundation.org/blog/learning-corner/learning-corner/hepatosplenic-t-cell-lymphoma-hstcl