Well, a little more background. I am 50 years old. Married to my wife of 28 years who is a nurse at Mayo. Two adult children - 18 and 20. They were 17 and 14 when I was diagnosed. Had to miss a lot of my sons senior year of high school and all that entails.

In Oct 2017, I was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. We thought it was fine after 12 rounds of chemo but about 6 weeks later it was back. More chemo leading to an auto stem cell transplant. The transplant failed because my stem cells were no good. After trying to extract, it was discovered that it had failed because I had developed AML - likely related to my previous chemo treatments. Was admitted immediately and went through the hardest chemo I’d experienced. Blood clots, heart issues, on oxygen, my GI tract was a mess.

I made it to transplant and all of that went well in comparison but had to be hospitalized two more times for a severe case of gvhd. Was finally sent home and had to receive liquid nutrition for about a month because my gut couldn’t tolerate any food.

This led to 6 months of photophoresis to deal with the gvhd. Was also hospitalized again during this time for double pneumonia related to getting legionnaires disease.