The diagnosis was bad. There was no silver lining.
A small chance of survival, a few months left to live.
More than four years after receiving his devastating cancer diagnosis, Austin Peck was defying the odds. The Goodyear firefighter had undergone more than $100,000 in treatment, including countless rounds of chemotherapy, radiation and other alternative medicines. His wife, Erin, left her job as a nurse to care for him full time; their two young daughters watched their father’s health decline.
In the end, the aggressive cancer showed no mercy. Peck died in August.
In an interview a few months before his death, Peck expressed a sense of desperation that wasn’t just for his own life, but his fellow firefighters exposed to cancer-causing chemicals as part of their job. “(Cancer is) killing people,” Peck had said.