WIBW: Rossville student in "dawg fight" against cancer
By Melissa Brunner
Leo Wehrli loves football.
“I just love the sport. I love the people around it,” the 16-year-old Rossville High School sophomore said. “Everyone has a job and you can do it right.”
The opponent for this Rossville Bulldawgs game plan these days is cancer.
“You gotta put your head down and just push through it,” Leo said. “That’s what I do during football when stuff gets hard, and I knew that’s what I was gonna have to do with cancer, because this is gonna be a long thing.”
It all started with a cough last November. His mom, Pam, says they went to the doctor and everyone thought it was a virus. But it didn’t get better.
“The cough just got worse and worse. It was deeper,” she said.
“It didn’t hurt, but once I got to school, I found out it was really loud,” Leo said. “Everyone would look over (at me).”
They went back to the doctor in January. Doctors did a chest x-ray and discovered a more than 12-centimeter tumor in his chest. That was on a Sunday. Stormont Vail transferred him to Children’s Mercy, where they did a biopsy that Monday, and the next day they got the news. Leo had a germ cell tumor, a fast-growing cancer.
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Children's Mercy Kansas City Cancer Center
Cancer in Adolescents and Young Adults