T Waskosky Tee Waskosky

Welcome to our CaringBridge site. We've created it to keep friends and family updated. 

As some of you may know and for those of you that don't, Tee has been on a journey battling Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma since April of 2013. At that time, he had 6 cycles of Chemotherapy and 20 tx's (treatments) of radiation. The tumors responded to this approach of tx's and the cancer was in "clinical" remission. It remained in remission since approximately the end of August 2013, until his August 2015 follow-up tests revealed that the cancer had come back and was now located in his liver. He started more chemo tx's in November, but this time there would be no radiation, as you can't radiate the liver. On February 2 2016, after just 3 rounds of chemo, his PET scan showed the liver was clear. For good measure his Dr. recommended he have a couple more chemo tx's, and that we go and talk to a specialist about having a bone marrow transplant (also known as stem cell transplant.) We indicated we wanted to be referred to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, so that's where Dr. Swenson sent us. We first had to see if Tee was a candidate for a transplant, and only if he could harvest his own stem cells for transplant. March 9, 2016, we met with Dr. Inwards, who is awesome and the very first test that had to be performed was to see how strong his heart was and if it could withstand a transplant. Heart test came back healthy and strong, Dr. Inwards said this is the right direction to go, for the purpose of the cancer not returning. There are no guarantees however, but not doing anything, the cancer would more likely than not reoccur and twice as fast as it had, besides his life expectancy would be significantly shortened. This now brings us to the next step in our journey....Tee will start the process for transplant March 22. It's quite an ordeal as he will have a lot of appointments, tests and procedures before it's all said and done. Dr says he will spend very little time in the hospital, but he has to stay in Rochester for 6 weeks and must have a care giver 24/7 for the duration. I will keep you all posted as best I can........Tami