31-year-old Clay Geiger of Lakeland understands the risks of a firefighter but he never imagined a rare cancer would put his life on the brink and a state law would help him pay for the medical treatments to fight it.
“I didn’t have to worry about bills and mortgage and everything like that,” he said,” I was able to just focus on treatment and getting through it.” The combination of chemotherapy and radiation during the first 6- weeks of Geiger’s cancer treatment left him 25 pounds lighter than when he started the journey 6-months ago.
“It’s like you’re going through survival mode where you’re just trying to continue to the next day, " he told News 6, “It was very tough.”
Geiger was diagnosed with NK-T cell lymphoma a rare and aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
He said a routine biopsy in his nose during sinus surgery provided the first evidence of the cancer.