HASTINGS, Minn. – Mom keeping up with her son is just the way Angie Wilson likes it. But just four months ago their morning runs looked a lot different.
“The first one I couldn’t even feel my legs after half the block,” Hastings freshman Lynden Wilson said.
Wilson’s road to recovery started just days after chemotherapy finished.
“I thought cancer at first had a really good chance of killing everyone,” Wilson said. “The one I had had a 90 percent chance of being cured.”
If a picture’s worth a thousand words than this year’s team photo says it all about Lynden’s battle with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“At that time he wasn’t able to hold up the mallet for our picture,” Hastings wrestling coach Josh McLay said. “I get emotional sometimes just looking at it because he looks so frail, so weak, and it’s hard for me to see him that way.”
McLay’s relationship with Lynden is a special one.
“When we’re in the (wrestling) room he doesn’t call me uncle or Josh,” McLay said. “He calls me coach.”
Even as his coach though, McLay had his doubts.
“I didn’t think he’d wrestle at all this year,” McLay said. “I didn’t.”
But watching his identical twin Mac wrestle without him was the motivation Lynden needed to battle back.
“He thinks this is where he could be at, and he’s trying to get where he should be at,” Mac Wilson said.
Where Lyden has ended up though has been a surprise to everyone: including mom.
“We were actually really scared the first wrestling match,” Angie Wilson said. “We didn’t want him to get hurt.”
But with every win Lynden puts cancer farther behind him, and his 9-6 varsity record is a testament to determination.
“Every time he steps on the mat is a great moment,” McLay said. “I’m unbelievably proud of him.”
“I’m back, and I’m done with all this,” Wilson said.
To celebrate Lynden’s victory over cancer, Hastings recently held a Takedown Cancer night for the Randy Shaver Cancer and Research Fund. Overall, more than $1,200 was raised. Takedown Cancer is a continuation of Tackle Cancer.