And all of that happened in about 36 hours.
Quessenberry called his parents, who were on vacation in Europe. He felt guilty for ruining their vacation, but the word from the doctors was the cancer was “very rare and very aggressive.”
He started chemotherapy the next day at MD Anderson Hospital in Houston. In what he called a “prayers come true” moment, he learned that MD Anderson had just developed a clinical treatment trial for this particular cancer.
Quessenberry spent three years in treatment. For 11 months, he underwent intensive chemotherapy. Every 21 days, he spent a week in the hospital getting chemo 24 hours a day. Then came radiation treatment for six months. Then two years of chemotherapy daily, then weekly, then monthly.
Then-Texans owner Bob McNair was being treated for cancer at MD Anderson at the time. He kept Quessenberry on the team’s injured reserve for those three years.
On Christmas Day 2017, Quessenberry finally made his NFL debut, playing 10 snaps for the Texans. He’d play one more game for them before moving on to Tennessee, where he worked his way up from the practice squad in 2018 to full-time starter in 2021 before he moved on to Buffalo in 2022.
