Elle Wasyl lost her father to pancreatic cancer 12 years ago and her husband Mike’s mother was a breast cancer survivor.
"Last year we decided to ride with our local gym down in Old Saybrook and joined (Team) Live Positive and had a really great experience," Wasyl said.
Elle pedaled for 10 miles. Her husband rode for a hundred.
"My husband kept texting me along the route where he was, how he was feeling, who he was with," she said. "It allowed me to kind of feel like I was him through the whole ride."
Right before the start of the new year, the couple got an unexpected call from Mike’s doctor referring him to an oncologist.
"How did something so benign as just a random blood test that wasn’t of concern," Elle said. "All of a sudden be a concern."
Doctors at the Yale-New Haven Smilow Cancer Hospital diagnosed Mike with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer that starts in bone marrow.
"He had no symptoms, he felt fine," Elle said.
Mike underwent three months of chemotherapy.
"He responded really great," his wife told NBC Connecticut. "He tolerated the medicines really well and worked the entire time through his treatment, told very little people. He just wanted to stay focused on the rest of him, cancer was just a part of him, it didn’t define him and he had that attitude the whole time."
Wasyl’s husband has also been treated with a stem cell harvest.
"There’s a much better prognosis," she said. "Longer remission was the goal."
Shortly after his diagnosis, Elle remembers when her husband heard the Closer to Free Ride commercial music in the kitchen.
"He was staring at the TV and he turned around and tears are coming down his face," she said. "He’s like, I’m riding that as a survivor this year and I said ok let’s go."
Mike is now in full remission. He plans to proudly wear a survivor jersey while riding for more than sixty miles with his wife.
"I keep saying I’m going to pack my jersey full of tissues because it’s going to be really emotional," Elle said. "It’s so personal this year."
All the money raised for Closer to Free goes toward patient care and critical research at Smilow. Ride day is three weeks from Saturday on September 9th.
