How Adult Stem Cells Saved Me From

The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead is the nickname for a highly decorated Marine Corps unit that I was assigned to during the Vietnam War.

During college I was a pre-med student carrying a heavy load and working fulltime.  I lost my student deferment and shortly afterwards got my draft notice.  My first thought was to avoid going to Vietnam, so I went to the Navy Reserve Recruiter.  I figured “Navy” good…“Reserve” even better.  The recruiter saw my record that I was pre-med and gave me a choice of either a barnacle scraper or a hospital corpsman (of course there is no such thing as a fulltime Navy barnacle scraper).  At that time there was a shortage of Corpsmen (they have the highest casualty rate of any job in the military).  I told him that I didn’t want to go to Vietnam, and he assured me that I wouldn’t, so I signed up.

My first year of active duty was at the San Diego Naval Hospital.  I then received orders to transfer to Fleet Marines and went to Camp Pendleton for a modified boot camp and what they call the “Devil Doc” school which is training to become a corpsman assigned to the Marine Corps.  When I received my orders to go to Vietnam, the Marines started warning me ‘don’t get 1/9.’   1/9 is First Battalion of the Ninth Marine Regiment.  It is a Marine battalion that, while they were assigned to Vietnam, received the highest Killed in Action (KIA) rate of any unit in the history of the Marine Corps.  My favorite scripture when I was in combat was Psalms 23:

¹ The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
² He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
³ He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.

⁴ Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

⁵ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over.
⁶ Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of the LORD
Forever.

I know the Lord had a purpose for me being in Vietnam.  I was heavily involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, and my lovely wife Charlene was on headquarters staff of the Military Division of Campus Crusade during the same time.  During my year tour, I led many young Marines to the Lord.

Within two weeks of being in Vietnam, I was sent up to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone).  I went through some of the worst battles of the Vietnam War including the siege of Khe Sanh.  I am shown on the left wearing a helmet in the following photo.

In the course of tramping through jungles with this infantry battalion, we were sprayed with an extremely toxic defoliant that was used to dissolve the leaves of the trees in the jungle which hid the Ho Chi Minh trail from the air.  This deadly spray nicknamed Agent Orange dissolved the leaves of trees into a goo that dripped on us as we went through the area.  The VA doctors told me my cancer was the result of Agent Orange.

I got through my tour in Vietnam with only minor shrapnel, but I didn’t realize that the effects of Agent Orange would hit me 35 years later.  In Fall 2006 I started to get a dry cough.  I went to the local doctor and he said it was just viral bronchitis.  He did not take an x-ray and my cough kept getting worse.

In early 2007 my best friend told me I needed to get an x-ray so I went to the VA that day.  As I was driving back home, they called me and said, “It’s very important that you get in here right away for a CAT scan.”  This was on the Monday.  By Friday I could barely breathe and I had a large swollen lymph node on the left side of my neck.  My appointment for the CAT scan was not for another week, but my friend Bill urged me to get into the VA right away.  The doctors immediately put me into isolation because they didn’t know if it was tuberculosis, Valley Fever, bird flu or something else.  They did a biopsy on the swollen lymph node, a number of blood tests, a bone marrow biopsy and CAT scan and determined that this was a very aggressive form of cancer called Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.  It was Stage IV and the doctor said it’s a good thing I came in; I only had about a week to live.  The VA staff could have told me to get my pastor or priest and give last rites, but Dr. Elaine Muchmore, who was the head of Hematology/Oncology at the time, decided to treat me aggressively with Rituxan.  It was a new anticancer agent.  This treatment was almost too aggressive because I started to become very sick, was convulsing and had to stop the infusion.  Charlene told our friends in the waiting room that, if we don’t pray, we will “lose Rod.”  Shortly after the prayer started, I was feeling much better, sitting up and eating so they began the treatment again.

When the calls went out for prayer, I had people from all over the country praying for me.  Because of my wife’s involvement with a Christian charitable foundation, I had prayer from large organizations like Billy Graham, Focus on the Family, Prison Fellowship, Joni Eareckson, Family Research Council and PureHOPE.  Through some friends of mine who were Catholic, I even had prayer from Carmelite nuns.  I’m not sure what a Carmelite nun is, but I am thankful for their prayers also!

In the first weeks of my chemo I was very sick and, as I was laying there in bed, I almost wondered if this was when I was going to die.  I remembered the Scripture that no plague shall come nigh thy dwelling.  I felt like the plague had come nigh my dwelling, come into the dwelling and sat down for dinner.  I started having some weird thoughts like it must have been judgment from God for some kind of sin even though I had been a Christian for so many years and yet I still had these thoughts.  I even had the thought that God doesn’t love me!  That’s pretty silly as I later — within a day or two — realized how could that be?  If God is love, how could He not love me?!

I was on a cycle of chemotherapy for several months.  Some of the agents used were cyclophosphamide, Cytoxian, Vin Christine, Doxirubican, Adramycin Dexamethasone, etc., etc.  A spinal tap revealed that cancer cells had gotten into my brain, so they added chemo into my spinal fluid.

By mid-April 2007 I returned home and was in a hospital bed with oxygen and very little appetite.  The nurses were administering anti-nausea medications, blood transfusions, platelet transfusions.  In June most of my hair had fallen out so I shaved my head.  The routine was go to the VA Hospital in La Jolla for the chemo infusion and then go home for several weeks to recover and then proceed to the next cycle.  After the four weeks of the cycle in July 2007, the oncology team felt I was a good candidate for a bone marrow transplant because of my age, previous health, and positive reaction to the chemo treatments.

After my four months of chemo work was completed in late August, I was sent up to Seattle to the Veteran’s Hospital.  They are one of three regional centers for bone marrow transplants in the United States.  The unit is called MTU (Marrow Transplant Unit).  Please see http://www.pugetsound.va.gov/marrowtransplant/Autologous_transplant.asp .

The unit does both types of transplants… one using your own cells called Autologous, which is the treatment that I had, and the other using donor transplants from close relatives (to avoid autoimmune rejection).  The MTU in Seattle has more than 20 years of experience doing these procedures.  They had a special ward with filtered air and strict sterile conditions.  The VA housed my wife and me in an apartment in Seattle and began very extensive tests to create a baseline.  Every CAT scan, MRI, heart test, blood test that you can think of was administered to me.  The MTU was extraordinarily thorough in obtaining a complete medical workup.

One of my last treatments scheduled before the transplant was a full body radiation scan.  The radiologists had me marked for getting massive daily dosages of radiation, but they decided that the effect on me would be too severe.  I probably would not be able to walk afterwards because I had already sustained neuropathy in my hands and feet from the initial chemotherapy.  Instead, I received a chemo that is very hard on the digestive tract (which is something that I currently have to endure).

I had a Hickman catheter put into my chest for the bone marrow transplant.  It consists of two tubes that go into the jugular and down nearly to the top of the heart.  One tube is for drawing out the blood going into the machine that is similar to a dialysis machine.  It filters out the stem cells.  The other is for the blood to return back into your body.  The medical staff harvested about 6.8 million stem cells from my blood with this procedure.  This process was not painful.  The apheresis took two four-hour sessions over two days.

People who read this will know that chemotherapy has negative side effects.  For me there were nausea and loss of appetite (even water tasted bad; I had to drink Gatorade instead to remain hydrated).  My legs swelled up with fluids and, at some point, I even experienced hallucinations.

I spent 20 days as an inpatient in the MTU.  The first treatment was massive chemo.  They knew from experience exactly how you were going to respond.  For example, day 12 you would start throwing up, day 14 you got sores in your mouth, day 17 you would begin to feel better.  The staff had repeated this process so many times over 20 years they would know exactly what you were up against.  After the 20 days, they infused my captured stem cells back into me, and I started feeling better.

I was released to return home a week before Thanksgiving 2007.  In December the port-a-cath was removed.  In the early months at home I had to be very careful.  I had a compromised immune system.  I had to avoid being outdoors because of pollen spores and not be around live plants, dirt, etc., because of susceptibility to fungus or mold.  I could not even eat fresh fruits or vegetables for the same reason.  Those things had killed other MTU patients after their transplant.  I also had to avoid any kind of exposure to people who were sick.  I had so many wonderful doctors and nurses who took care of me.  One of them, Amy Soloman, gave very sympathetic, tough love, encouraging, humorous care to me.  She is the Hematology/Oncology Certified Nurse Practitioner (CNP) who has voluntarily been following my case closely for years.  I have been sick and I have been healthy — I like being healthy better!

Our immune system is an amazing gift from God.  We all have cancer cells, bacteria, virus and fungus, etc., in our body, and our immune system is in charge of defending us against these attacks.  Somehow the body signals to the bone marrow to release stem cells.  Stem cells are found in bones and various organs of the body.  These cells transform into the types of cells that are needed — whether it’s a red blood cell, white blood cell, platelets or killer cells.  They move to the area of the body where they needed.  How does an infection in the leg signal to the body to release stem cells and have the bone marrow send white blood cells down to the leg?  Scientists still do not know exactly the mechanism.  They say it is chemical but they don’t really know.  This diagram from the National Institute of Health shows the cells that come from bone marrow stem cells.

When I was stationed at the San Diego Naval Hospital receiving my training for hospital corpsman in the late 60’s,  I would go down and watch autopsies while I ate lunch (I know that sounds sick but I was pre-med).  I saw patients who had cancer throughout their whole body.  They did not know they had cancer until the last minute.  Usually you are not aware you have cancer until it presses on some vital organ or cuts off circulation to an organ or you are experiencing severe pain.  In my situation the Lymphoma affected my breathing and the enlarged lymph nodes in the chest began pressing on the lungs (hence the breathing difficulty and cough).  A healthy immune system can fight against cancer before the cells mutate and begin to multiply.

Spending time in a hospital bed can help you get closer to God, so maybe that’s one advantage of getting cancer.  I have heard other people report that cancer helped put their lives in a better perspective.  I know that there wasn’t anything I did wrong.  I was exposed to an industrial agent in Vietnam.  Chemotherapy is brutal, but it is the best thing that doctors have to offer now.  The doctors do not claim that chemo is a cure, but every year I survive my odds at longevity increase.  One hundred years from now the medical profession will look back on these treatments as barbaric, but I believe they will still be using Adult Stem Cells to treat all kinds of conditions.  I am now into my fourth year of remission, and I thank the Lord for stem cells.

This entry was posted on March 16, 2011 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Cancer, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.