Brad Schmidt

On February 6th, Brad and I traveled to Sydney, Australia to begin a two week cruise of Australia and New Zealand.  Brad became very ill while in Sydney, and I took him to the emergency room at Sydney Hospital.  It was determined that this facility did not have the capacity to care for Brad and he was transferred by ambulance to Prince of Wales Hospital.  After many labs, MRI's, CT Scans, and other evaluations, it was determined that Brad has Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), a type of cancer in the blood and bone marrow with excess immature white blood cells.  After the better part of three days in the intensive care unit, Brad was transferred to the hematology floor where he received great care.  This particular cancer is very aggressive and treatment needs to begin as soon as possible.  Once his condition became stable, I worked on getting him back to the states for treatment.  The consulting hematologist was a wonderful advocate for helping me get Brad back home so that he can start treatment.  Through his connections with colleagues around the world, we were able to arrange admittance to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida.  We flew halfway around the world from Sydney, Australia to Tampa, Florida via air ambulance after two weeks in the hospital, arriving at Tampa at 2 am on Saturday, February 23rd.  We are so thankful that Brad will receive treatment at one of the leading cancer treatment and research centers in the country.  He will have a bone marrow biopsy tomorrow to further define and target his treatment, which will hopefully begin on Tuesday.  At this point, he is expected to stay at Moffitt for the next month.  While this is not the journey we expected when we started our trip, this is the one we were given.  Brad is a fighter, in good spirits, and has the support, words of encouragement, and prayers of so many.  For this we are thankful.  We will keep you updated through this site as Brad continues his journey.