When Joe Wyrwa turned 40 years old in 2024, he was feeling especially reflective and a bit emotional. Forty can be a milestone for anyone, but for Joe it represented so much more. His wife, Katie, had been diagnosed with melanoma a decade earlier in 2014. He wanted to give her a gift and had a plan.
In June 2014, a spot on Katie’s arm turned out to be an aggressive form of melanoma. So aggressive in fact, she and Joe were meeting with surgeons two days after the biopsy was complete. A tiny cluster of cancer cells was found on her sentinel lymph node and while the lymph node appeared clear there was a risk of the cancerous cells moving to other lymph nodes. Three months later in August, Katie had her lymph nodes removed. Joe and Katie had been dating for only nine months.
Joe remembers the year of treatment Katie faced. For the first month she went to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston every day for infusions. She or Joe –they had moved in together– would administer the daily injections for the remainder of the year. He witnessed firsthand the horrible effects of this disease, not only physically but mentally also. Their lives were irrevocably changed. Katie finished treatment a year later on September 30, 2016, and Joe proposed three days later.
Prior to having melanoma, Katie had, ironically, run the Boston Marathon twice in honor of other family members, raising money for IMPACT Melanoma. One of Joe’s decisions on his 40th birthday was to run the marathon in honor of Katie. When he met with IMPACT Melanoma and told them his story, he found the organization to be overwhelmingly supportive. As with his dedication a decade earlier to support Katie during her treatments, he was determined to train and run Boston while raising money for IMPACT Melanoma.
Joe is proud of running the iconic Boston marathon and proud to have done his part to as a member of Team IMPACT raising awareness and money to help fund IMPACT Melanoma’s mission He looks back on the time when Katie was sick and has empathy for not only the person going through treatment but also the family and friends caring for that person. His gift to his wife was straight from the heart.
Watch Joe’s story here.
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