Sports super-agent Peter Schaffer heard the words no parent ever wants to hear – your child has cancer. And then he heard it again.
Negotiating more than $1 billion in contracts for NFL Hall-of-Famers, athletes and coaches is worthless when your teen-aged children have been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system that afflicts nearly 9,000 Americans every year.
What are the chances of having both your children contract this non- hereditary disease? Perhaps one in a hundred million.
Peter’s daughter Lily knew something was wrong a few years ago when she started having uncontrollable and unbearable itching over her entire body. She couldn’t sleep, stand up or even eat. After six months of suffering and visits to dermatologists, allergists and even a psychiatrist, Lily still didn’t have an answer. But when Peter and his wife Alison took Lily to Children’s Hospital at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, they discovered the true cause: Hodgkin’s, stage 2B.
Then, at the start of the pandemic this February, Peter’s son Gavin, a burly high-school lacrosse player, started losing a lot of weight. At first, doctors thought he had contracted COVID-19, which at the time was a mysterious disease. But when COVID tests came back negative, and Gavin’s health worsened, they turned to Children’s for the answer, and it was devastating: Hodgkin’s, stage 4.
What would you do as a parent? How did sister and brother battle through the treatments? And who got to ring the Warrior Bell at Children’s Hospital, a sign of good health?
Dr. Brian Greffe, Pediatric Oncologist and Medical Director of the H.O.P.E. clinic at the Children’s Hospital at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, treated both Lily and Gavin. Dr. Greffe joins Peter on the podcast and shares insights on the disease, breakthrough treatments at Children’s and how the kids were unstoppable in their fight with cancer.
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