One month after my son started high school, he woke up with shortness of breath. I figured he might have cracked a rib in football practice and sent him to school. A few hours later, he texted me that when he would breathe, his back would hurt. At the end of the day, he couldn't participate in football practice and asked me to pick him up from school. I took him to the doctor, and they thought he had pneumonia. After a few weeks of him not getting better and a biopsy later, Matthew was diagnosed on October 17, 2018, with Hodgkin lymphoma 1A (HL). On Halloween, when most kids were out trick or treating, he began his first chemotherapy treatment and checked into the hospital at 14 years old.
The next three months were the worst three months of our lives. There is nothing worse than having your child sick with a life-threatening illness. When we were halfway through his treatment, we received word from one of the fellows that Matt's cancer was not lighting up in the PET scan. This was a great sign and the best news we could receive.
After his second round of chemo, when Matt left the hospital and came home, he asked to be filmed so he could thank everyone for supporting him through his cancer journey. I had just read about a 19-year-old girl who had found her best friend for a day who she met when she was seven on a cruise. She posted that she was looking for her on Twitter, and when she woke up the next day, she had found her friend! So, I decided to post the video on Twitter. I put in the caption that Matt had HL and he was a fighter who would win this fight. He was an athlete and a lover of sports. I asked for the tweet to be shared, and we were looking for words of encouragement for him from famous athletes. We went to bed, and when we woke up, the tweet had gone viral and had many videos from famous athletes such as Rob Gronkowski, Chris Baker, Teemu Selanne, and many others and had already been shared 5,000 times. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) now Blood Cancer United was one of the organizations that saw the tweet and found Matt and our family. The tweet has currently been viewed over 2.3 million times with 1,000+ comments, 30,000 retweets, and 44,000 likes.
Matt had a total of four rounds of chemotherapy in three months. When he finished his last treatment, he had a PET scan, and it was confirmed he was cancer-free. We were able to breathe again.
Jewlz
Hodgkin lymphoma 1A (HL)
