JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — After surviving a life-threatening cancer, a Jacksonville man is using his battle as a new reason to live.
September is Lymphoma Awareness Month and survivor Matthew Wilson never thought he would be one of 80,000 people diagnosed with Lymphoma every year.
The multi-sport athlete was the prime example of health until finding a bump on the back of his neck that changed his life forever.
"When Matt told us, he said, 'It's confirmed that he has Lymphoma,'" Wilson's mother, Sophia Wilson, told First Coast News. "I'm like, 'what's Lymphoma?' I didn't even know that it was cancer. He said, 'Mom, I have cancer.'"
What was first diagnosed as a swollen lymph node, quickly turned into a positive test for Lymphoma - an aggressive cancer of the immune system.
"Matt's case is quite unique. He's a young gentleman with classical Hodgkin's Lymphoma," Mayo Clinic Lymphoma Specialist Dr. Han Tun said. "The tumor was very large, in medical lingo, we call it bulky, and he couldn't tolerate standard chemotherapy approach."
Wilson, who was a collegiate football player, put his life on pause to spend days in chemotherapy — watching friends celebrate their 21st birthdays from his hospital bed.
"It hit hard that not too many kids my age were going through what I went through and everyone always tells you that they understand and they understand," Wilson said. "And I kind of don't really understand until you're in that situation. So, it's kind of really, especially hard to relate to someone else just because I felt so alone at the time."
Wilson received a grant from Mayo Clinic two years into his battle with Lymphoma to test out the new precision Lymphoma clinic, which eliminated his tumors completely.
“We do genome sequencing and once we have the reports back, we go over the findings and it has tremendously helped a lot of my patients,” Tun said.
Now living a life in remission, Wilson wants to use his three-year battle against Lymphoma to advocate how anyone can get it, adding that he was typically the youngest patient in the waiting room.
“I'm actually grateful for my experience going through what I went through just because I feel like it helped me grow a lot as a person spiritually. And also like, just like overall, kind of just gave me a different outlook on life and to be more grateful and thankful for the support and the things that I do have,” Wilson said.
Now with clear scans, Wilson has changed his career plans to become a firefighter and EMT with the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department to give a sense of hope to patients the same way his nurses and doctors did for him.