Mt. Lebanon firefighter celebrates victory over cancer with blood drive
Matt Kelsey is back on duty with the Mt. Lebanon Fire Department.
Matt Kelsey and Sam Logsdon are getting married in October.
Chalk this one up as Matt Kelsey 1, Acute Myeloid Leukemia 0.
A little more than half a year after his diagnosis, the Mt. Lebanon resident is celebrating his victory over a relatively rare type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow.
“They did genetic testing, and my oncologist said, ‘OK, there’s no sign of the cancer anywhere,’ and I had total metabolic remission,” Kelsey reported. “That’s the best possible result.”
He will join many of the folks who supported him during his fight, including fellow members of the Mt. Lebanon Fire Department, for the Matt Kelsey Victory Park Blood Drive.
The event, which will help replenish Central Blood Bank’s supply of blood and blood products, is scheduled from noon to 5 p.m. Aug. 27 at Mt. Lebanon’s Bird Park. In conjunction with the drive, a barbecue fundraiser will benefit Jamie’s Dream Team, a nonprofit that is helping to make a dream come true for Kelsey, 33, and future wife Sam Logsdon.
“Before I was diagnosed, my fiancée and I were planning on having a big wedding celebration in October of this year. We’d been saving up for it for a while, and then this happened,” he said about the diagnosis.
Enter Jamie Holmes of White Oak, whose organization provides financial support for, among others, those who are suffering from serious medical conditions.
“Things really came full circle,” Holmes said. “Matt had helped us fulfill a dream for a boy who was a patient at Children’s Hospital and wanted to see a real fire truck. He and Sam are such a wonderful couple, and we are so excited to help with his wedding.”
The date, Kelsey said, is Oct. 21: “pretty much the wedding celebration we wanted to have in the first place.”
In the meantime, he’s back to work in St. Clair Hospital’s emergency department and serving again as a volunteer firefighter, ready to help the people who helped him.
“The fire department, my co-workers, my family, the community in general: The amount of support was absolutely ridiculous,” he said, in a positive manner, of course.
As he underwent several rounds of chemotherapy, a key source of support came from donors of blood and blood products.
“I basically needed transfusions from the minute I stepped into the hospital,” Kelsey said, explaining that when he was diagnosed, he had severely low levels of hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body’s tissues, and platelets, which form clots to stop bleeding.
“Once the chemotherapy started, in addition to wiping out the bone marrow and the cancer cells, it also wipes out your blood. I’m not generating anymore, and I’m also wiping out what’s there,” he continued. “So during every treatment, I’d have to go in, get more blood products, get more red blood, get more platelets.
His initial chemotherapy treatment, called an induction, was a 10-day process that caused hair loss and a host of other issues, including a condition called mucositis that caused his tongue to swell and grow lesions.
“I wound up getting over 30 blood products over that treatment-and-recovery period, because it wipes out everything,” Kelsey said. “For the subsequent treatments, I didn’t need as many blood products, because it’s not as strenuous a treatment. But usually I’d wind up with two bags of platelets and two bags of red blood over the course of that recovery period.
“So that’s a lot of blood, and way more than I’d donated in my lifetime prior to that. I can tell you that.”
To donate at the Matt Kelsey Victory Party Blood Drive, use group code F0050046 and:
• Make an appointment online at www.centralbloodbank.org/donate-blood.
• Call 866-366-6771.
• Download the Central Blood Bank mobile app.
• Email Pat McRee at: pmcree@mtlebanon.org.