Rocky DeLorme was in great physical shape when he made his mark on the wrestling mat and in the mixed martial arts ring.
That’s what made his fight against cancer so hard to watch for those closest to him.
Sixteen months ago, while DeLorme was attending Arizona State University to study molecular biology, he found a lump on his side. He came home to get it checked out and was told it could be a bruise or it might be cancer.
A biopsy revealed rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare and deadly cancer that usually occurs in children. There have been 400 cases in 30 years in all of the U.S. and Europe combined.
Rocky DeLorme had Stage 4 cancer that had already spread to his lungs.
“It’s just a fluke,” said his mother, Kathy DeLorme. “It’s like winning a bunch of lotteries, but backwards.”
Rocky, 29 at the time, went to Aurora Hospital, St. Vincent Hospital in Green Bay and then to Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee, which consulted with Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
“They said without treatment he would have a couple weeks to a few months,” Kathy said.
They chose an innovative and aggressive type of chemotherapy. The doctors gave him a 5 percent chance to live.
“He was determined he was going to beat it,” Kathy said, as he also told her, “I’m the strongest person around.”
After six months he stopped the chemo.
“He said it felt like the chemo was killing him more than the cancer,” Kathy DeLorme said.
The family then went to Mexico in search of a cure. The prescribed regimen there was a more holistic approach, including diet, sleep and exercise. That was right up Rocky’s alley.
“He knew already because he was into fitness,” his mother said.
Rocky was taking up to 50 supplemental pills a day since the cancer and chemo had depleted his body. He also tried heat and oxygen treatments, coffee enemas and magnets, which were placed on the cancer spots. He was taking shots, and his blood went through a cleansing process.
The family returned to Wisconsin. To continue Rocky’s therapy, they purchased a heat dome, traveled to Green Bay for a month to use an oxygen chamber, in which the patient breathes 100 percent pure oxygen, and later used a portable oxygen concentrator supplied by hospice.
Rocky, feeling better, enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. After four months his health deteriorated.
Desperately seeking answers, the DeLorme family went to Jamaica for five weeks for treatment with a Rastafarian doctor. But Rocky was too weak to continue any more treatments.
“It was really tough,” Kathy said. “He was in a lot of pain.”
After returning home, Rocky died on May 27, right after his 31st birthday and 16 months after his diagnosis.
“He fought to the end,” Kathy said.
A benefit to help DeLorme’s family with the medical expenses incurred during his battle with cancer will be held July 20. The treatments in Mexico and Jamaica were not covered by insurance.
Kathy said Rocky initially resisted the suggestion of a benefit.
“He didn’t want people to feel sorry for him,” Kathy said. “He agreed after it was decided that the benefit would have a health component which included physical exercise.”
The benefit begins with a 5K run/walk at Rocky’s alma mater, Shawano Community High School, where he was a star athlete.
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