John: Greg, you’ve been nominated as a Model Citizen for the October issue of Model Citizen Magazine because of your service to our country and our community, and because of the way you have battled cancer and survived, twice. For our readers could you first please share a little bit about what you have been through with your health and what your status is now?
Greg: Currently, I’m in remission from cancer. In 2013, I was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and immediately had to go into aggressive chemotherapy treatments for six months every 3-weeks having chemo sessions. I’ve made it through that.
John: What is it like to be on chemo, for someone who has never gone through it?
Greg: First I’d like to say I had a really good doctor, Dr. Gostanian of Medical Oncology,I must give her a lot of credit. She did warn me about my first chemo treatment brutal and would only get worse over time. It’s cumulative, a lot of people don’t know that.
John: A lot of people do not know anything about it.
John: Is it a chemical or a pill?
Greg: It’s a chemical.
John: Wow.
Greg: That’s why you need to be closely monitored for your heart and lungs issues, there can be scarring of the lungs and other side effects. What it does is it kills cancer, obviously, but it brings you close to death.
John: Is it like I’ve heard where they bring you to the brink of death, so that they kill off all of the cancer cells they can, but it is still killing you slower than cancer?
Greg: You can’t stay on for too long, it actually does a lot of damage to your body, but it’s killing cancer at the same time. So it’s a good thing, but also a bad thing. A lot of people come out of it with a lot of side-effects that they must live with for the rest of their lives. Before I say anything else, I have to say I come from a family of seven. I had a single mother and I give her a lot of credit. She’s a very tough woman. I think that’s where I get my toughness from and my sense of tomorrow will be better, I get that from her.