ALLEGAN COUNTY, Mich. — 28-year-old TJ Visser spent months battling soft-tissue sarcoma.
On Saturday, his family hoped to celebrate his fight. He passed away only a few days before. Now his family is spending this upcoming Saturday raising awareness for the rare disease he battled.
In January, TJ was diagnosed with soft-tissue sarcoma after doctors found a large mass on his abdomen. But by then, he was already at stage 4.
“He had an unfair hand,” said TJ’s wife Ashley Visser. “You know, one of the most common things that were told by everybody was just ‘bad luck.’”
After months of fighting, TJ died at his home on October 6. He left behind three children: an eight-year-old son, a five-year-old daughter, and an eight-month-old son.
“It’s time you’ll never get back,” said Ashley. “He probably held his newborn son for, gosh, not even 24 hours in combination over this whole year. You know, how do you? How are you supposed to heal? When you physically can’t do anything. Like, he physically couldn’t hug his children because of the pain that he was in.”
TJ was among the 13,000 people in the United States dignosed with soft-tissue sarcoma each year. According to Dr. Rashmi Chugh, MD, a clinical professor at the University of Michigan, treatment and life expectancy varies from person to person.
“Because it affected kind of such a wide range of ages, and can present in so many different forms, you know, we definitely need kind of more research and more attention to patients that are affected by this,” explained Dr. Chugh. “And because a lot of people don’t know about it, a lot of times, you know, patients get diagnosed later, or there’s not enough funding to kind of look at new treatment options. So, you know, I think the more people know and hear about it, the better so we can kind of make lives better for our patients.”
Raising awareness is exactly what the Visser family intends to do next.
Saturday’s benefit was planned by TJ’s father, Daryl Visser. It was originally meant to celebrate his son’s cancer fight alongside him. Now, it will be used to help raise money for medical costs, as well as raise awareness about soft-tissue sarcoma.
“I’m doing this so she ain’t gotta worry about bills,” said Daryl.
“I know he’s in a better place, you know,” said Ashley. “He’s somewhere that’s better than what this world will ever be.”
Saturday’s benefit will be held at the American Legion Post 154 in Wyoming on Byron Center Avenue from 3pm to 7pm.
A GoFundMe to help TJ's family can be found here.
