How one Richland student is fighting to overcome a 2nd round of cancer
After fighting cancer once, a Hanford High junior is getting a chance to beat it a second time.
Since this fall, Caleb Ward had been hoping to find a matching stem cell donor. The good news for the teen came in the last few weeks.
“His doctors were able to do a search to find a pretty good match,” his mom, Rachelle Ward, said. “He is doing well considering where he is in this process. He is still getting his nutrition from food and he is drinking.”
The last time Caleb battled leukemia, he was saved with the help of an experimental trial of the cancer-fighting drug Dasatinib and, plus chemotherapy. The combination was able to turn the tide for nearly five years.
His family was hoping he would reach five full years without the disease because the chances of it returning would drop dramatically.
Weeks before beginning school, he had a familiar pain in his ribs. When they reached Kadlec Regional Medical Center, they got the bad news — his leukemia had returned.
His condition was complicated because he has the “Philadelphia chromosome,” which is associated with poorer outcomes.
Finding a donor
Caleb’s family turned to relatives, friends and strangers, looking for a possible donor. Be the Match, an organization run by the National Marrow Donor Program, helped run a registry drive to look for a match.
People turned out to help Caleb after a Herald article in early September. Tori Fairhurst with Be The Match said 43 people pledged to join the registry within days of the story.
People who sign up can help by either donating stem cells or by giving bone marrow.
While they had an influx of people, a match wasn’t immediately found for Caleb. Finding a donor for stem cells or bone marrow is trickier than just matching a person’s blood type. The donor’s cells need to fit seamlessly with Caleb’s.
There is another source of stem cells that is also tracked by the registry. They are cells taken from a baby’s umbilical cord and placenta after birth.
The benefit is the cells don’t need to match as closely and can also be stored in a public blood bank for future use.
They eventually received word from doctors that there was a match that was close enough to work with, and doctors got to work on the regime of chemotherapy necessary to prepare Caleb.
The procedure was last week, and now he and his family are waiting the two to three weeks it will take for the cells to travel to his bone marrow and start making healthy new cells.
“Sometimes it’s sooner,” Rachelle said. “To pass the time, he has watched the series ‘The Office’ and now he has started watching ‘Parks and Rec.’ He is tired, so his physical activity had dropped way down.”
Road to Recovery
Although Caleb may be on his way to recovering, he has some more milestones to reach once the new cells start regenerating.
“Eventually they will start taking away anti-rejection medications,” she said. “In terms of fighting the cancer, the hope is that all of the cancer cells have been removed and anything that remains will be attacked by his new immune system.”
If everything goes well, doctors will evaluate him for the possible complications that can occur after bone marrow transplants, and ... he might be able to return to public places at the one-year mark.
Anyone interested in joining the bone marrow registry can go to bethematch.org.
Participants must be in good health ages 18 to 44. There are a few conditions that prevent someone from being a donor such as autoimmune diseases, past or present blood cancer and Hepatitis B or C.