You remember the quote from “Shawshank Redemption.”

"Get busy living or get busy dying."

Adam Gostomski, who’s a West Windsor-Plainsboro North baseball player, has decided to choose the former.

You see, Adam has battled cancer, and through the entire experience has stayed positive.

Not an easy thing to do when you’re suffering from Hodgkin’s Disease.

As members of his family had said, it would have been east for him to have gone to the dark side.

But Adam was resilient.

For the past couple of weeks, he has been undergoing proton therapy as an outpatient at University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. The radiation phase will hopefully be the final stage of his treatment, which has included chemotherapy sessions during the past two winters.

That will allow him to, among other things, get on with his summer baseball season.
 For his parents and two younger sisters, life would return to a more normal routine, as well.

According to Adam, it was never a matter of if, but when.
“You just have to think positive,” he said on a recent Sunday afternoon. “It’s not that hard — or for me it wasn’t. I saw other kids suffering at the hospital, but that whole attitude is why I’m standing here right now.”

Adam played outfielder on his high school team, and was on the state championship Babe Ruth team last summer, but coming off chemo treatment limited him and he never hit full stride. His playing time was limited on varsity, but he expects to blossom this summer playing for a travel team based in Voorhees.

His mother said,“you get nervous.” “He’s a teenager. They could go the other way, to the dark side.”

Support from friends, the community and the school district was more than the family could have imagined.

And of course there was the support from his baseball teammates.

WW-P North coach Mike Santoro said“I knew his skill set,” “But I didn’t know how tough he is until last year, when everything happened.”

He said…“He didn’t want to leave the field, he didn’t want to give up baseball, and that’s still the way he talks now. It’s almost as if nothing happened. He just plays it like nothing’s going on and he’s going about his business. He has the maturity level of someone in their twenties or thirties.”

His friend Sid Kumar said, “He’s a really strong kid, obviously. He’s had chemo twice and he’s in school almost every single day. Even with all this stuff, he’s really down to earth. You would expect guys to hate everything, to hate life, but he’s the complete opposite of that,” he said.

“Going through cancer, some people don’t come out alive,” he said. “He did, and he can tell the story.”

Adam Gostomski – Cancer Survivor – This weeks Ray of Hope – Posse Positive Person of the Week!

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