18 • COMMUNITY ADVOCATE • Friday, August 13, 2021
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Shrewsbury student perseveres against leukemia, COVID-19, other challenges By Cindy Zomar, Education Coordinator SHREWSBURY - For Shrewsbury’s Jonathan Tomashefsky, the President’s List honor he earned at college this year was even more remarkable than normal. Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire, awards students who achieve a 3.7 or higher-Grade Point Average (GPA) with
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Jonathan Tomashefsky is a student at Plymouth State University.
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the distinguished designation of President’s List. That’s a lofty goal for most. For Tomashefsky, though, the recognition carried extra weight as he suffered through bouts of COVID-19, sepsis and pneumonia in the last year, all while continuing to battle Lymphoblastic Leukemia, a diagnosis he has had since he was seventeen. Diagnosed with the cancer in December 2016 after a he saw a suspicious and unwarranted large bruise on his knee, Tomashefsky underwent a rigorous chemotherapy protocol. Generally, the kind of blood and bone marrow cancer Thomashefsky has attacks children and teens more often than adults. Positive results can often be seen with treatment, however. “There is never a good kind of cancer, but as far as being treatable, I guess I was lucky that this is what I had,” he said. Two and a half years into that treatment, Tomashefsky hit a speed bump on the road to recovery in August of 2019. Tomashefsky suffered a relapse of his leukemia. “When I relapsed, the treatments became more intense, and I was forced to be in the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) for a couple of weeks,” he said. There, he developed sepsis. “I also had targeted radiation therapy on my brain, and multiple lumbar punctures, but the staff at UMass Memorial and Dr. Grossman, my oncologist, were amazingly kind,” he said. With a weakened immune Tomashefsky | 19
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