Back From The Brink: A Recollection of 07 Nov 05

It happened 8 years ago this week. Hovering near the brink of death with Stage IV cancer, I was unable to eat, talk, or sleep through the night. Talk of hospice care had begun, and the consensus among doctors was that I would not make it another two weeks.

Almost everything had been tried to arrest this death sentence. Just weeks before, we had been told by the wizards from the experimental treatment community that my only hope was to be a test subject for an experimental drug; the disease was too far advanced for any other existing treatment. The other option was a radical treatment known as a stem cell transplant. We chose the latter option on the basis of my conviction that if I was going down, I was going to go down swinging. But in the weekend leading into Halloween that fall of 2005, even that slim hope was evaporating. My tumor markers were extraordinarily high, and I was caught in the ultimate catch-22: tumor markers do not go down without treatment—they go up; but no doctor wanted to continue treatment of any kind because those markers were too advanced.

That weekend, while I lay clinging to life in a sterile hospital environment on the 8^th floor of Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, my home church—Calvary Temple of San Antonio—began beseeching the Almighty in prayer. The following Monday, the nurses took a blood sample and came back with the shocking news: my tumor markers had DECREASED. The drop was slight, but unheard-of. My doctor, the perpetually awesome Paul Shaughnessy, made the call to move ahead with the stem cell transplant. Everyone agreed that a bona fide miracle had taken place. I was wheeled into apheresis, but I was too malnourished for anyone to find veins—so they installed a catheter in my neck and separated adult stem cells from my blood to freeze for later use. I was sent home to spend Halloween with my family, and hospitalized for treatment a few days later.

Normal chemotherapy is given in 100% doses. A stem-cell transplant consists of approximately 500% doses of Cisplatin, a platinum-based drug. The idea was to shut down all cell growth entirely in my body—a sort of “re-boot” of my immune system. It was the equivalent of bringing a person to the brink of death and then bringing him back. Three days of such treatment will most assuredly kill a person—without the novel rescue of the adult stem cells, which they infused back into my system afterward. I’ll never forget the terrible smell of the chemical preservative used to keep them frozen; nor can I forget the sight of my 12-month-old son toddling around the infusion room with Carrath and my mom.

It was 07 Nov 05.

For the next 14 days, I was neutropenic—absolutely vulnerable to anything that attacks the immune system. Those who die from this procedure usually do so from something as simple as a cold. Dr. Shaughnessy’s instructions were clear: if he runs a fever of any sort, you are to bring him back to us pronto. I had been sent home from the hospital the Monday before Thanksgiving, and had eaten my first actual meal in months on Thanksgiving Day. It was a joyous occasion, and still the biggest holiday of the year for my family. But the next day, I ran a slight fever. I wasn’t about to get dragged back to the hospital, so I tried to hide my condition from Carrath. That worked about as well as Obamacare, and she rushed me to the hospital. They admitted me for observation and kept fluids in me for a week. When I realized that I was going to miss Zechariah’s first birthday, I was as angry as I could be. I remember threatening Dr. Shaughnessy that if he didn’t let me come home I would come up out of this bed and make him regret it. I think he and Carrath had a good laugh at that one.

Dr. Shaughnessy and the nurses and staff on the 10^th floor of Methodist Hospital were definitely called by God to do the work that they do. Every year around this time, I am thankful beyond mere human expression for the miracle of life that I was given in 2005. Despite my inherent worthlessness, God saved my life—and these fine people were instrumental in that. I am still driven by the motivation that this second chance not be wasted.

Tomorrow, I’ll go see Dr. Shaughnessy and his awesome staff again, for it’s time for my checkup. I’d love for the world to know what a great man he is, and what a crack team of professionals work year-around to preserve life at the Texas Transplant Institute. We’ll all get a good laugh at how I weigh around 100 pounds more than the day they released me, and I’ll attend a reunion of stem-cell transplant survivors the next day. The best part is that I’ll walk out of my own volition and, God willing, be with Zechariah on his 9^th birthday.