John Pozniak and Emily Goehring don’t want a gravy boat or matching towels as wedding gifts. Instead, they want to make a child’s wish come true.
Pozniak, a former International Falls resident, and his fiance are teaming with the Make-A-Wish Foundation in hopes of fully funding the wish of a child diagnosed with cancer.
The wedding is a perfect platform for helping to make their dream a reality, the couple said.
“We are using the wedding as a time frame to raise money,” Goehring said of their June 6 wedding. “We want to reach people outside of our guest list for donations and have the last push for donations to be at our wedding reception.”
This isn’t the first time the pair have been involved with Make-A-Wish. As teenagers, they both worked with the organization, but back then they weren’t granting wishes, they were receiving them.
Pozniak and Goehring were both diagnosed with a type of lymphoma when they were 14 years old. The couple know the fear that goes along with a cancer diagnosis and it is their hope to provide a child with a glimpse of hope.
“The opportunity to give a wish to a child goes beyond what the wish is, it is what it stands for,” Goehring said. “It gives hope to a child and reminds them that the future is brighter, sunnier, and waiting for them on the other side.”
Survivors unite
While they may have grown up more than 500 miles apart, it was ultimately their diseases that led them to each other.
“I first identified John at the Relay For Life in 2010 (at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities),” Goehring said. “It wasn’t hard to spot another young survivor in a purple shirt.”
Pozniak earned the purple shirt after fighting a battle most teenagers don’t have in mind. Like most adolescents growing up in the Falls, Pozniak spent his time on Rainy Lake, playing baseball and improving his guitar-playing skills. His focus was on getting a driver’s license in a few years, not going to the doctor for a persistent cough and some back pain.
“I was stubborn to go to the clinic, but my mother called my stepmother Kelly, a nurse at the clinic, who got me an appointment with Dr. Charles Helleloid that evening,” he recalled. “I had been camping on Rainy during these days so I thought I was just sore from the trip and coming down with a cold, nothing seemed alarming at the time.”
However, less than 24 hours after the Aug. 17, 2000, appointment, Pozniak was in Duluth trying to absorb a fate he did not see coming.
“The oncologists came into my room and...performed a biopsy of a lymph node in my neck,” he said. “Within in about an hour, he returned with the results, looked at me, and stated, ‘You have stage IIA T-cell non-Hodgkins lymphoblastic lymphoma.’”
Confused, Pozniak asked the doctor to translate the diagnosis in layman’s terms. To this day, he can remember the three words that came out of the doctor’s mouth, “You have cancer.”
The following day, chemotherapy started and continued nonstop for the next two years. Throughout the entire battle, Pozniak said the thought of “not surviving” was never an option.
“My reaction was determination to live a life not letting (having cancer) get in the way or draw attention to it,” he said. “ It has been over 14 years since I was diagnosed, (with) no re-occurrences knock on wood.”
Emily’s battle
Three years later, Goehring was an active athlete growing up in Clarks Mills, Wis., about 30 miles south of Green Bay. The starting point guard on the eighth-grade basketball team had just graduated from grade school when she noticed she was getting tired easily and more than usual. On top of that, she had a dry cough that wouldn’t go away.
“My physician thought it could be asthma, but when the symptoms persisted, they put me on antibiotics and called it bronchitis,” Goehring recalled. “Weeks went by and my performance in basketball kept slipping and my physician ordered a chest x-ray, which would be the beginning of my cancer journey.”
Based on the x-ray results, Goehring’s doctor sent her to a children’s hospital in Milwaukee. During the 90-minute drive, she noticed a bump on her neck.
“We hardly walked through the door (of the hospital) and (doctors) were prepping me for a biopsy of the lymph node,” she said. “Having never undergone a surgery, other than my tonsils when I was 4, I was nervous.”
That night, less than a week into her summer vacation, Goehring was diagnosed with stage 2B Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The cancer took up one third of her chest and kick started four rounds of chemotherapy on 21-day cycles.
“School was a big part of my life and I wanted to lead the most normal life as possible,” she said. “Therefore, when I had to have my radiation treatments, I would drive to Green Bay at 6 a.m. every morning before school for three weeks. By Oct. 2003, my scans showed no sign of any cancer.”
Unlike Pozniak, who remained in remission after having clean scans, Goehring’s cough returned.
“I had a really bad feeling about it,” she said. “I was scared to death.”
The scans came back clean, but a month later, the monster returned. This time, it was more aggressive and had metastasized to her lungs. It was considered stage four and called for high doses of intense chemotherapy.
“The thing that scared me the most was that I knew exactly what I would have to endure again,” Goehring said. “The nausea, the pain, the hair loss, and the look of pity in stranger’s eyes. But I was a fighter and I knew I could get through this with the help of my family and friends.”
This time, the 15-year-old would need a bone marrow transplant, and fortunately, she could be her own donor. Two days before turning 16, she received the transplant and spent the next 30 days in isolation.
“I was transfusion-dependent for six months after the bone marrow transplant,” Goehring said, adding she went to the hospital three times a week for blood products. “This was not a life to lead which led to a consultation for another bone marrow transplant. My family was tested and my oldest brother was a match. The day scheduled for further testing, my blood counts started to climb. My counts continued to increase to normal levels and the thought of a second transplant vanished. That was over 10 years ago.”
Wishes come true
A bright spot in both Pozniak and Goehring’s treatments were receiving wishes from the Make-a-Wish Foundation. It gave them a chance to escape the cancer demons and inhale a fresh gulp of normalcy.
Randy Pozniak, John’s father, submitted the application for his son’s wish and John was surprised with a phone call.
“It was the best phone call I had ever received,” he said.
After considering his options, Pozniak chose a 16-foot Mirrocraft boat with a 25 horse motor and center steering column. During the summer 2001, the boat was launched for its maiden voyage. And the boat, he said, was more than put to good use.
“I have gone all the way from Ranier to Kettle Falls countless times in that boat, making several stops at Andersen Bay for cliff jumping and camping,” Pozniak said. “I grew up on the lake so I could fish in the boat right out in front of my house. I’ve pulled friends skiing and water tubing, traveled with friends to all the resorts on the lake and even drove it up through the north arm of Canada.”
Fourteen years later, the wish is still put to good use.
“I gave Emily a tour of Rainy Lake just last summer,” Pozniak said. “We went to Sha~Sha and Little American Island. Still runs great.”
Goehring decided to include her family on her wish in January of 2004, when the group escaped the cold Wisconsin winter and traveled to Oahu, Hawaii, for a week of swimming with dolphins, riding in a helicopter, and enjoying a pig roast on the beach.
“I wanted to pick a wish that included my family, who endured just as much, if not more than I had gone through,” she said. “They would jump over backwards for me and I couldn’t have asked for a better support system. I wanted to get away from reality and try to enjoy time together as a family.”
A new wish
Whether it’s a boat or a trip to somewhere tropical, the couple said they hope they can fund the wish of a child who is going through the unthinkable fight of cancer.
“We have a unique past and we both feel strongly about the Make-A-Wish Foundation,” Goehring said. “Nothing would make us happier than sitting across from a child and not only ask what they would like to do, but also be able to finance their wish.”
For now, the couple has set a goal of raising $5,000. So far, they’ve raised almost $1,000.
“Since this is an avenue we have never gone down before, we are unsure if we will fall short or exceed our goal,” Goehring said. “Overall, this is a charity that is close to our heart and we simply want to make another child smile. When you are diagnosed with cancer, your world shatters. A wish is there to pick you up and encourage you to keep going...It helps, even if it is just for a moment, to take the fear out of the disease. What a wish can provide to a child is limitless.”
