OIF-OEF veteran battles terminal cancer at 23

Michigan veteran now battling terminal cancer
August 6 2013
LEROY TOWNSHIP, Mich.

(NEWSCHANNEL 3) - A West Michigan veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan is now fighting a new battle at home against terminal cancer. 23-year-old Matt O'Dell of Leroy Township is a former Marine. And doctors recently found he has inoperable brain cancer.

O’Dell came back to Leroy Township to return to his life, moving into a new house with his wife and their two-year-old daughter. But then he started feeling sick he was coughing and having trouble swallowing. “When we went to U of M, Matt actually said, 'what are we looking at here?' and they said, with treatment, we're looking at not months, but years.

It's a lot to take in, considering we thought it was just pneumonia,” says O’Dell’s wife, Jamie O’Dell. Doctors told him he has a brain stem tumor and that it’s incurable and now he is planning out how to take advantage of every minute left with his family.
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