Tom Doerger, Leader and Mentor, Needs Your Help

Doerger Friends and Family is organizing this fundraiser.

Donation protected

Your Help is Needed

Tom's extended family and friends are asking for the blessing of your donation to help enable multiple surgeries, hospital and home care, and expensive medications not fully covered by insurance.

TOM'S STORY

We were all influenced and shaped by people growing up, though few have had such a significant positive impact on young men's lives as Tom Doerger has at LaSalle High School for over three decades. As a counselor, football coach, and mentor, he made it his mission to make a difference in young men's lives, shaping stronger minds, bodies, hearts, and souls in their high school years and beyond.

A former Notre Dame football lineman in the 1980s with a large frame and deep voice, Tom receives immediate notice but truly is a gentle giant. He has been there for those around him, peers, and especially his wife Jenni, their 3 children, and 5 grandchildren.

Disease and Liver Transplant

In 2019, Tom was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). The probability of contracting Cholangiocarcinoma (Cancer of the Bile Ducts) with PSC is high, and the doctors found cancerous cells in Tom's liver. The 5-year survival rate for this cancer is 5-10%, so Tom received a liver transplant in 2020. For the balance of life, Tom now requires Immunosuppressants, drugs or medicines that lower the body's ability to reject a transplanted organ.

Current Health Emergency

Tom recently entered the ICU after multiple health and life-threatening complications, including infections involving his GI tract, lungs, blood, brain and heart. Through multiple specialist interventions, treatments, prayer, and Tom's fighting spirit, we are hopeful he will regain enough health to have his necessary surgeries moving forward. Surgeries include his heart and colon. He remains a very high-risk patient with lengthy and complex treatments ahead. Costs for treatment and care have been and will continue to be exorbitant.

Tom now needs your help. His family and friends ask for your thoughtful consideration of donating any amount to help Tom and his immediate family in this time of need.