Help Todd Van Laere and Home 4 Healing

My name is Todd Van Laere and I will be participating in my second Transplant Games of America. I will be competing in golf singles, golf doubles, Texas Hold'em and Cornhole. The games give me an opportunity to compete, meet new people and share stories with other transplant patients and donors.  You never know what tomorrow brings, Never Give Up! 

Home 4 Healing is a non-profit housing initiative founded by a cancer patient friend that I met at Mayo, Shannon Camlek.  They provide housing solutions to blood cancer patients in Rochester, MN.   To date Home 4 Healing has provided 1550 nights to 52 families. On average most families stay 5 months in Rochester.  Shannon and I met on July 4, 2018 looking out the window at fireworks on the 7th floor of Methodist hospital in the Mayo complex.  Our stories have intertwined through the years, to the point where we have the exact same diagnosis and same transplant doctor.  

My Story...…

My journey started in June of 2018 when I was diagnosed with AML FLT3 Highly Adverse (Acute Myeloid Leukemia).  I was on vacation to enjoy some musky fishing and I was feeling "off" all week.  On Monday I went to see my family doctor to get some bloodwork done.  When the test came back there was something abnormal about my blood and they immediately referred me to a Hematologist Oncologist along with a bone marrow biopsy.  After my biopsy I didn't even make it out of town and the Oncologist called me back to the hospital.  The doctor told me, "you have AML" and I said right back to him in blink of an eye, "how do we cure it and what do I need to do".  Nothing was going to stop me from doing everything possible to survive.

I decided that I wanted a second opinion so I headed down to Mayo to meet with another Oncologist.  To my surprise not only did I need the chemo treatments but I also need a  bone marrow transplant (stem cell transplant).  The transplant was needed if I wanted to survive due to the FLT3 mutation.  I was told I only had five minutes to decide where to get the treatments because of this mutation.  Fortunately I was able to meet my transplant doctor the same day.  One thing about Mayo is they have specific doctors for everything and my team was MASSIVE!  The only thing I remember about that transplant meeting was "we are going to cure one disease, but will give you another, but we have drugs that can control the other disease".  He was talking about GVHD (Graft Versus Host Disease). The easiest way to describe this is the new stem cells and your body are having a fight and not recognizing each other.  Its good to have some because that means the new stem cells are destroying the cancer cells.  Now my adventure really begins.  

My transplant day was September 24th 2018 which the nurses called my new birthday.  They say this because you are basically a new born baby with no immune system. Things were going well for the first couple of weeks then I ended up with this thyroid issue and then GVHD of the liver.  The extremely high doses of prednisone that I was on for months devastated my body.  I ended up with infections in joints, spinal compression factures and bone death. This all resulted in both my hips and both my shoulders needing to be replaced.

Once I got home I couldn't walk, lift, sit, reach anything.  (Huge love to my wife Marsha for being by my side through all the tough challenges we faced.  I Love you!!).  I spent the next year and half going to physical therapy three times a week along with me doing rehab work at home everyday.  After my insurance wouldn't allow PT anymore, I still wasn't at the point where I could do things I love again, golf, fish and hunt.  After my rehab was when my wife told me about the Transplant Games of America.  It was the perfect boost for me to keep this rehab going.  I remembered this guy that would always say hi and keep encouraging me.  I found out he was a trainer at Sanford Performance so I went to pay him a visit.  I walk into his gym and asked if he remembered me, he stood there with a blank face so I removed my mask, "I thought you were a goner".  I asked if he would train me and he said, "lets get to work". To this day I still train with Anthony Morando three times a week.