‘Deciding to fight ‘: Grant Strouse
Strouse endured six rounds of chemotherapy over the span of 23 weeks after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma during the spring of 2013.
As of Aug. 2013, strouse was declared cancer-free, and has since returned to Waynesburg University.
While his friends and classmates were relaxing on spring break of 2013, Grant Strouse was in the hospital being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer that attacks the lymph nodes.
He knew he would have to get through the next eight months including going through six chemotherapy treatments in the span of 23 weeks.
“I thought my whole world was crashing down,” said Strouse.
Chemotherapy is the use of chemicals to fight a disease and is mostly thought of during cancer. The worst thing for Strouse during this whole ordeal was the side effects of the chemotherapy. Strouse lost all of his hair only a week into treatment.
“It finally hit me that first week in,” said Strouse “This is real. Everything was a blur, but now everything is real.”
After the first treatment was complete, Strouse hit the realization that his situation was real and he might die. He would sleep 18-19 hours a day due to the therapy itself and the medications to counteract the side effects of the chemotherapy.
Every week he would have to get blood drawn to check his platelets and white blood cells. Strouse’s platelet level was extremely low, forcing him to take even more precautions.
“It was kind of like living in a bubble for a while,” said Strouse.
After his treatments went on for six weeks and nothing had changed, he still had cancer, but he knew he could make it through. Three more weeks had gone by, and that is when it all changed.
After his third treatment, and eight weeks of good blood tests, his last test before the next round of chemotherapy reminded Strouse that cancer is a continually changing disease.
“Cancer is day to day, whether you will survive or not. You can get better and then it comes back again,” said Strouse. “You also can be moved to where you feel like you will die, and then you get better.”
Strouse’s test results for the third week came back lower than normal. He went to his doctor who decided to push the chemotherapy back a week to make sure he would be able to withstand a change in his lifestyle if he had to.
The doctor did this for two weeks, and continued to test the numbers for his white blood cells, including testing his bone marrow, to make sure that it was producing white blood cells. Less than a week had passed by and Strouse was at his doctor’s office to check up on his previous tests.
He discovered his numbers were still low from the blood work, but the bone marrow biopsy was negative, meaning that his body was producing white blood cells.
“One of the chemo drugs I was on actually was tricking my antibodies into attacking my fresh white blood cells.” Strouse said. “My body was destroying itself.”
After finding this out, his doctor said they will not be able to postpone the chemotherapy any longer.
Strouse recalled something his doctor said to him around that time: “Ultimately we have to fight the cancer first, and then we can rebuild your immune system.”
His doctor then apologized.
“He looked me straight in the eye and apologized,” said Strouse. “He said because the next 18 or so weeks are probably going to be hell.”
The next 18 weeks did prove to be as bad as the doctor expected.
He started getting shots that went straight into the bone marrow in his arm. The shots acted as a booster to help produce more white blood cells, thus allowing his body to have more of a chance at fighting off infection. A side effect from this booster shot, as well as the continued chemotherapy treatments and medications, was excessive sleeping.
“I slept through the entire month of May, and most of June,” said Strouse. “I lost touch with reality, I didn’t get up or walk around the house. I just laid there.”
After the third treatment when his numbers were so low, it put him in a really dark place emotionally and spiritually.
“I got to a very dark place in my mind where I was thinking that I wasn’t going to make it,” said Strouse.
A high school friend texted Strouse during his bout with cancer and told him that he had been thinking about him a lot.
“I have been trying to figure out why horrible things happen to good people,” said the friend, who is an atheist. “For the first time in my life I knelt down and I prayed real hard.”
His friend’s life was turned around and he began going to church and praying.
“That’s when it hit me,” said Strouse. “The whole reason I got sick was because, for me being affected by something so devastating, everyone around me could be brought to a closer life of prayer and a closer life with God.”
After this epiphany, Strouse started to feel better.
“Soon after I realized that I started to get better,” said Strouse. “My blood cell numbers came back up and my hair kind of started growing back again.”
Strouse’s return to college life was postponed a semester as the tumor had crushed his left vocal nerve paralyzing it. With a whisper of a voice, he went to a voice specialist who helped bring it back. He returned in the spring to complete his final three semesters and will graduate with a focus in chemistry. He was declared in remission on Aug. 15, meaning that he is cancer free. Due to the fact that non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a blood cancer, the cancer will remain in Strouse’s blood.
“Cancer will always be a part of who I am now” said Strouse. “But it won’t define me.”