Cancer survivor takes on big project: Extreme bus makeover
A couple in their 70s who have been married for more than 56 years, Don and Carol Tresedder can credit their bus conversion with more than making them feel alive.
Mr. Tresedder has had to endure about a half-dozen cancer surgeries since beginning his bus conversion, and during the process he’s lost his right leg right up to the hip, in addition to parts of his lungs. Without something to keep him going, he could easily have decided all these battles against cancer just weren’t worth the effort.
Instead, the bus conversion has become something that even he admits borders on an obsession.
Cancer survivor takes on big project: Extreme bus makeover
By STEVE BROWNLEE, Journal Staff Writer
GWINN - Don and Carol Tresedder can take all the comforts of home anywhere they want on the North American continent.
No, they don’t own a moving van company. Instead, they have a much simpler way of living in all the luxury they need - a motor home that is actually a converted 40-foot-long Greyhound-style bus.
The finished project is so impressive that they were asked to be featured in Bus Conversions Magazine, and their motor home was named “Miss August 2005.”
The 11-page spread in the speciality magazine features a narrative written by Don Tresedder, a diagram of the inside, and more than a dozen photos, including the full two-page centerfold photo.
A couple in their 70s who have been married for more than 56 years, the Tresedders can credit the bus - er, motor home - with more than making them feel alive.
It’s easy to see how his nearly decade-long project may have actually kept Don Tresedder alive.
Tresedder has had to endure about a half-dozen cancer surgeries since buying the burned-out Motor Coach Industries vehicle from a bus tour company in Las Vegas in 1996.
In the process, he’s lost his right leg right up to the hip, in addition to parts of his lungs. Without something to keep him going, he could easily have decided all these battles against cancer just weren’t worth the effort.
Instead, the bus conversion has become something that even he admits borders on an obsession.
“I was spending 12 hours a day every day trying to get this ready for the road,” he said about the first year he owned the bus in 1996 and early 1997.
Though it wasn’t for several years until doctors discovered that arthroscopic surgery to repair his knee didn’t solve his problem, Tresedder had a project that would keep his attention for a long time to come.
“I’ve had two or three other motor homes, and I’ve done work on them, too,” he said, “but this was the biggest project I’ve ever taken on.
“This takes your mind off the big problems. I used to go to bed every night thinking about it, figuring out how to take care of something else. I did a lot of my best thinking in bed at night.”
All that thinking didn’t allow him to dwell on his health problems.
During their winter trip late in 1998 with the motor home in Texas, doctors there discovered he had a tumor in his knee and said they would have to remove the entire area and reconstruct his leg.
Part of the upper and lower leg bones were removed and an artificial joint was constructed to replace the middle of his leg.
That worked for about two years until doctors rediscovered cancer twice in his leg in 2001, eventually having to perform an amputation above the knee.
Cancer was again found in 2002, in the part of his leg that was left, forcing amputation right up to the hip.
During the past two years, he’s been back for two more surgeries, the first to remove cancerous nodules in both of his lungs, and most recently in May, another surgery to remove another cancerous nodule in just his left lung.
His only complaint?
“It seems like in the summer I’m always recuperating,” Tresedder said. “I’d have finished this a lot sooner if it wasn’t for that.”
Read the full story in Michigan’s The Mining Journal (this article is missing)
PHOTO: Don and Carol Tresedder proudly show off their 40-foot-long motor home converted from a Greyhound-style bus at their Crooked Lake residence in Forsyth Township. Just behind the bus is the large garage Don parks it in. (Journal photo by Steve Brownlee)
[update- the original story and photos are now missing from the Mining Journal’s archives, but I saved the article some time ago. Unfortunately, I do not have the photos that accompanied.]
