The Southwest Voice

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Unlike most people, I have more than one birthday. The first celebrates my birth and the second, Feb. 9, is the day I received my stem cell transplant. In the fall of 2000 I was diagnosed with primary amyloidosis. If you’ve heard of multiple myeloma, then you are close to understanding the illness. I was fortunate that my primary care physician Dr. Stephen Strategos had recently studied the rare disease.

After months of chemotherapy, I entered the City of Hope National Medical Center for a three-month stay. There I was given daily injections to increase my stem cell production. My transplant used my own cells, not that of a donor. After a couple of weeks, tests determined that I’d developed enough stem cells. The harvesting procedure involved straining out the cells that were then irradiated and frozen to await my transplant.

I’d by lying if I said I wasn’t afraid when I entered the isolation ward, and the room I would call home for over a month. Once high-dose chemotherapy was administered, it took less than a week before I was deemed “ready” for the transplant. Then, on the morning of Feb. 9, 2001 my nurses, garbed from head to toe, entered my room singing, “Happy birthday to you!” while one held my hand, the other began the process of infusing me with the frozen stem cells.

What happened next took a total of 29 days. The doctors checked my blood twice daily to watch the counts that would determine that my stem cells had “taken hold.” It amazed me then, and still does today, that those frozen cells sought out my bones and began to remake an immune system. At the end of those 29 days I was released from isolation, much thinner and definitely weaker. It took another week before my doctors released me to the care of my local oncologist. The day I left the City of Hope was March 15, which amazingly is my wife Debbie’s birthday.

So much has happened in the past seven years, but nothing is dearer to my heart than the morning my nurses wished me happy birthday. And, in spite of the fact that I’ve traveled a rough road, I am still here. To say I am blessed is an understatement because that incredible procedure given to me that Feb. 9 saved my life and allowed me to share my story.