High school cancer survivor overcomes obstacles to walk at his graduation

Getting through high school was a challenge for Thomas Sweeney of South Philadelphia.
Photo credit Hadas Kuznits/KYW Newsradio
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Cancer may have kept a Philadelphia high school student away from his friends during most of his high school years, but it's not keeping him from his graduation.

Getting through high school was a challenge for Thomas Sweeney of South Philadelphia.

"It's definitely not easy when you have tubes and wires all hooked up to you and you're trying to learn algebra," he said. 

His mom Debbie Reilly explains that out of nowhere one day at the age of 13, Sweeney had a three-hour nosebleed, fever and trouble breathing. He went to CHOP where he was diagnosed with leukemia.

"It was horrible. Horrible. You know, because you can't make it better," she said. 

 Over the next several years, Sweeney basically lived at the hospital and studied from his hospital bed.  

He did a lot of self-learning and had to catch up on his junior year when he returned to the Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School, a String Theory School, as a senior.  

But his friends were so happy to see him again they named him prom king.

"They printed flyers, they put them around the school, they voted for me, they made sure other people voted for me. So, I couldn't have done it without them," Sweeney said. 

After Sweeney received a blood transfusion, his cancer went into remission. 

But after suffering complications from treatment, he had to re-learn how to walk.  

These days, he's out of a wheelchair and using one crutch, which is how he's walking across the stage at graduation to claim his high school diploma.

"I look forward to, you know, all the normal teenage stuff that he'll be doing and all the grey hairs I get from normal stuff, not from him being sick," his mother said.