MADISON Winning the State Cow of the Year award at the 2014 World Dairy Expo on Oct. 3 was only the second biggest thing that happened while the Peterson family of Cashton was in Madison that week.

The most important came a few days later, on the west side of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, when stem cells from Kurt Petersons bone marrow began flowing into the blood stream of his brother, giving Scot Peterson, 45, a new immune system and a good shot of beating adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Hes a man of few words, says Scot, of his younger brother, Kurt, 40. But you know he really loves you to do something like this.

Its been a good news/bad news kind of a year for the Peterson brothers, who co-own the Coulee Crest farm in the rolling hills of Monroe County, and the states queen of cows, Coulee Crest Nick Lorilyn. Guernseys are the caramel brown and white cows known for the richness of their milk. And Lorilynn won the crown because she, her mother, and one of her daughters have each produced 40,000 pounds of milk in a year.

The last weekend in June, the National Guernsey Association held its national convention in La Crosse. The Petersons hosted a tour of their farm and a dinner event for 475 convention goers at their farm.

Scot Peterson, a burly guy who competed in Sweden for the world tug-of-war championship when he was younger, felt pains in his legs, odd bruises, and general exhaustion.

I thought I was tired from all the work of getting the farm ready, Scot Peterson says. He got through the convention and the national sale on June 30. That was another high point for the farm, with one of Lorilyns daughters topping the sale at $19,000.

By the next day, there was bad news.

By the middle of the day on July 1, I was in the hospital, finding out my diagnosis of leukemia, he recalls.

His oncologist, Dr. Wayne Bottner of Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, told Scot that he had a type of leukemia, ALL, in which the bone marrow makes too many lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. ALL is more common and easier to treat in children. Adults fare better if they can find a match that allows them to have a stem cell transplant from a donors bone marrow. So Bottner referred Peterson to the UW Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center in Madison.

Originally posted here:
Cashton man goes from winning state award to battling cancer