The surprising reason this dad splurged on a Mustang for his teen son

Joe Tegerdine was searching for an old "beater" car for his 18-year-old son, Joseph. But then he bought him a Mustang instead.

"He's a pretty amazing kid," Joe tells TODAY.com.

Joe is also a pretty amazing dad.

Joe's post describing the reason for the purchase has more than 13.8 million views on Twitter. He wrote: "For those wondering why I’d buy my 18yr old son a 330hp Mustang, well, he’s been given months to live and can’t work long enough to buy one himself. His comment on the way home, 'Dad, I’m going to squeeze a few extra months of life just to be able to drive this.' #cancersucks"

Joseph has osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, and he's already outlived his prognosis.

He had been trying to save money for a car, but when recent scans showed that Joseph's cancer had progressed, his parents decided to help make one of his dreams come true by buying him a Mustang.

As a result of the X post, Joseph was personally invited by Ford CEO Jim Farley to visit Ford Performance Racing School. (He's going in April.)

Joe Tegerdine said that he and his wife, Kerry, have asked their son what other "bucket list" experiences he wants, but he mainly wants to spend time with his family in Springville, Utah: Joe, Kerry, his older sisters Grace and London, and his younger brother, Langston.

"If you look at my day-to-day life, it's about as ideal as it gets. I've got my dream car, I have a family that I love, a girlfriend that I hang out with all the time and that I love, I play piano, which I love, I read books that I personally pick on topics that interest me. It's fantastic," Joseph says.

Though he is incredibly sincere in counting his blessings, he hesitates when looking ahead. "Feeling fulfilled in the future is the hard part," he says. "But I've managed to make my day-to-day life fulfilling for however long I have."

Diagnosis

In 2019, Joseph complained of knee pain. Only 13 at the time, he was an active teenager, playing football and running track among other sports.

He went in for an X-ray that required a follow-up MRI. Within a few days, Joseph was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer that mainly affects teenagers and young adults.

The amount of time between Joseph’s first X-ray and his first chemo treatment was just 10 days.

After his first round of chemo, Joseph had a rotationplasty on his right leg. “They take out the tumor and any of the surrounding bone that could have been affected, and then the rotate the lower leg and reattach it to your femur so your ankle becomes your knee and then the foot fits into the prosthesis,” says Joe. “He chose to do that because it gives him the best options for mobility.”

After the operation, Joe needed more chemo, which he completed in fall 2019. At that point it seemed as though the treatment had worked. He began physical therapy to learn to walk with his prothesis and he joined the swim team.

But in 2022, Joe’s medical team confirmed that the cancer spread to his lungs, which took two surgeries to remove.

In January 2023, he started a clinical trial for a new treatment, but he had to drop out of the trial just three weeks in because his cancer returned, this time in his left leg. Three weeks ago, the family discovered that the cancer was back in Joseph’s lungs. He will start radiation again this week.

“For lack of a better word,” Joe says, “it’s like whack-a-mole. It’s aggressive. It’s coming back. And the one that’s in his lungs right now is the biggest it’s ever been.”

“As far as ‘cancer kids’ go, I feel like I’m pretty average, if not below average,” Joseph says with modesty. “I’ve met some really stunning kids, who are just the strongest, most amazing human beings known to mankind. They’re so nice, so funny, so upbeat and genuinely, like, really good people.”

He chooses his next words carefully, “It just feels kinda ... weird ... to be getting recognition.”

The bucket list

The thing Joseph wants most is to spend the rest of his life hanging out with his family.

When TODAY.com spoke to the Tegerdines last week, four of his family members had just returned from a whirlwind trip to Japan, another item that was on Joseph's bucket list. The Tegerdines love to travel as a family, but they've had to cancel trips when Joseph received a bad diagnosis.

"We've gotten to the point where if he's feeling good, we'll just go," Joe says. So when they realized there was a little sliver of time before Joseph was scheduled to start radiation this week, Joe says, "we booked it, and two weeks later, we're in Japan."

The entire family has had to come to terms with Joseph's diagnosis in their own way.

“You never want to have conversations with your child about their own mortality,” Joe says. "We've had to have those conversations."

Like his son, Joe somehow finds a way to count his blessings. He notes that he knows people who have lost children suddenly, without warning: "As awful as this is, at least we've been blessed with this time that we've had for these last five years. The fact that he's still with us, and we've been able to build and make more memories is a blessing. So we're thankful for that."

There aren't many items remaining on Joseph's bucket list. He wants wants to spent time with his entire family on a beach vacation. And he wants to take a road trip with his little brother ... he'll be driving the Mustang, of course.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com