B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL): Jim's Story (video)
Summary: Veteran, firefighter, and transplant survivor Jim Finley, compares his Iraq War experiences with battling leukemia with a transplant.
Transplant: 2022
Something’s Not Right: “I probably had leukemia for months, if not a year, before I was formally diagnosed. This is part of being a stubborn firefighter…we think we’re invincible.”
(00:23) Jim Finley: My name's Jim Finley. I'm a firefighter for Chagrin Falls Fire Department in Ohio. I'm also a husband. I'm a cyclist. I'm a dad to two Dachshunds. I'm a combat veteran from the military. I'm an avid chef and wine drinker. And I'm a survivor of B-cell ALL leukemia.
(00:40) I probably had leukemia for months, if not a year, before I was formally diagnosed. This is part of being a stubborn firefighter, which is a normal thing. We hate to ask for help. We think we're invincible. We are the ones who take care of problems. For the better part of a year, I was gaining weight and I didn't know why. And I was still exercising and working out at the fire station, but even simple exercises were gassing me, getting me really tired very quickly. I didn't understand what was going on. I would just be on a treadmill walking, not even a brisk walk, just trying to walk to get myself moving, get the blood pumping or something like that, and even that was making me tired.
(01:30) And then all of a sudden, I started to lose weight, unexplained. I was eating the same. I was working out, but I lost 10 pounds in about a week, and that was a little worrisome. And we were at a friend's house and it was unusually warm and she had all this food and I ate a half a slice of pizza. Everyone's like, "That's all you're going to eat?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm just not hungry." And everybody at this little get-together said, "You don't look right. Your color's off. You've been really tired lately." And my wife really noticed that because if I'm off work, I find a project around the house to do or I'll go for a bicycle ride, something like that if the weather's cooperating, and I didn't want to do anything. So, she said, "Promise me you'll call the hospital." So, I called my friend Don, who's an emergency room physician for University Hospital, and he said, "Yeah, losing weight unexplained, that's not good. You need to come into the hospital tomorrow and get some blood work done."
(02:36) So, I drove the fire car from our fire department to Ahuja Hospital, which is part of University Hospital, went to the emergency room there. So, I thought, all right, they'll take a few vials of blood, I'll sit around, get some preliminary results, go back to the fire station, continue my day. Well, a half hour turned into an hour, turned into an hour and a half. Somebody came up and said, "Are you anemic?" I said, "No, not that I've known of." I texted my chief, I said, "They think I'm anemic." He said, "Oh, great. Get to eat a bunch of steaks now." But then they said, "Well, we're still going to dig."
An initial clue something’s not right: “This is not a room where you get good news.”
(03:13) And then another physician came out, one of Don's friends who was the attending that day, and he's like, "Jim, I need you to come with me." I said, "All right." So, I got up and he took me into a room. It wasn't really an exam room, but I could look around the room and think, this is not a room where you get good news. Everything, the lighting, it was a little subdued. It was a comfortable place. And he's like, "I'm sorry, it's some sort of cancer. We don't know what kind yet, so we need to get you downtown to main campus."
(03:45) So, at that point, I said, "I should probably call my wife." So, I called my wife, who worked right around the corner from that hospital, and I said, "You need to get to Ahuja Hospital." And she's like, "Why? What's going on?" I go, "Just get here. I can't explain it over the phone." I ended up texting my chief and I said, "They said they needed to transport me downtown." And he's like, "They're not transporting you. We're taking you." So, he sent a squad crew with extra people to grab my fire car to take it back to the station. My wife was there at that point. It was pretty emotional because neither one of us really knew what was going on.
(04:24) And my squad transported me downtown. And I remember one of the firefighters, Brittany Isom, she also worked as a paramedic at University Hospital's main campus in their emergency department, so she knew the whole layout of that giant building. She had her key card to swipe us in and get me up into Seidman Cancer Center, which is a part of University Hospital downtown. That's when I thought life is upside down right now. I'm going to wake up. This is a huge mistake. Nothing like this has happened. There's no family history, so I'm sure I'll be down here for a little bit and they'll figure out it's something else. Maybe I am anemic, but it certainly can't be cancer.
The diagnosis determined: “They knew it was a leukemia, and they knew it was ALL.”
(05:05) But by the next day, they knew it was. They knew it was a leukemia, and they knew it was ALL. They just said they were determining their treatment plan if they would find out if there were any markers, which they said makes things a little more difficult or tricky to treat. So, of course, the next day, they came in and they said, "Oh yeah, if you pop positive for the Philadelphia marker, it's Philadelphia chromosome." I'm like, "Great." So, of course it had to be complex.
Surviving combat but chemotherapy felt more threatening: “I thought every single thing was probably getting me closer to the end of life.”
(05:39) I was a Navy corpsman assigned to Third Battalion, 25th Marines. Corpsman is basically a medic. I joined after 9/11. I was already a firefighter. I was injured in combat by a suicide bomber. My lungs burst. My trachea was lacerated. About four days of my life were unconscious. I woke up eventually in Germany and then was sent back to America to be stabilized. I knew the problems that I had after the bomb, and I knew I'd recover. As a medic, I knew exactly what was going on with my body. When I was diagnosed with cancer, that was very different. That was something I couldn't really control. They told me their treatment plans going forward, so I thought, well, I survived a suicide bomber and some pretty significant injuries fairly well, so I thought, all right, this will be no big deal. Even though I can't figure it out, they seem pretty confident, so I'll just go along for the ride.
(06:48) And they started chemotherapy. And after the first round I thought, well, this is no big deal. And then the second round hit and side effects started hitting me, and that's when I really... I didn't know it was happening at that point, and I thought every single thing was probably getting me closer to the end of life. Every side effect that was there was happening to me. And even though they explained those side effects to me, I couldn't connect that these side effects were normal and happened to a lot of people and they know how to treat them, so I was in a little bit of turmoil for the mid-rounds of chemo. It took five rounds of chemo and a lot of education from other cancer patients and doctors and nurses and physician's assistants to really let me know that this is completely normal.
(07:43) A doctor friend of mine, who actually was a military physician but now works for University Hospital in Cleveland, he called me when I was home during the nadir, where they send you home to bottom out. And it was after round five and I was looking in the mirror when he called, and he said, "How do you feel? What's going on?" I said, "I look and I feel like I'm dying," because I just looked in the mirror and I didn't understand who I was anymore. I had just lost so much weight and I was so frail and so weak. But at that point, he said, "Just call the hospital. They'll support you."
(08:19) So, I called up and this one physician's assistant said, "Yeah, come on in. We'll support you for this." So, I went in, they put me in a room, they took my blood, and that's when he came back and he says, "You must be pretty tough. I can't believe you're walking because your counts are so completely low right now. It's dreadfully low." And I said, "I'm not tough. I just finally understood what you guys were talking about, and especially with the supportive role that you play in this."
The Unexpected Caregiver: “She was the pillar of strength that kept this whole thing running.”
(08:56) So, when I first got diagnosed and I called my wife to come to the hospital, things were pretty emotional. She was confused as well. We didn't know what was going on. But my wife, her and her friend have a little gallery, and a lot of their customers, their spouses are doctors and nurses and people of different stages of their life, so she had a good support system. And my wife learned very quickly that suddenly she was a caregiver and she was the rock, which had never happened before.
(09:35) Me being a military veteran, a combat veteran, and being a firefighter, I was always the even keel at home. And now, I was spiraling and really confused and not knowing what to do. And my wife was thrust into this role where she had to figure out insurance. She had to figure out where medications were coming from. She had to figure out how to get me back and forth to the hospital for supportive care as that little journey went on. And there was only a couple times she really broke down, but most of the time, she was the pillar of strength that kept this whole thing running. It's a pretty emotional, rough situation, not only on you, but everybody around you.
(10:23) My chief told me early on the day I got diagnosed, he was on the phone with me, he goes, "You're going to survive this. You're strong. You already survived a bomb in Iraq. You're going to survive this, and your whole job now is to help other people and talk to other people and get them through this." So, that's become my role. So, I've talked to regular people, but there's a lot of firefighters who I talk to across the country now.
"I'm a firefighter for Chagrin Falls." And my oncologist said, "Well, you can't do that anymore."
(10:51) While I was going through chemotherapy and I remember my oncologist, she asked me at one point, she goes, "What do you do for a living?" And I said, "Well, I'm a firefighter for Chagrin Falls." And she said, "Well, you can't do that anymore." I was like, "Excuse me?" It was a bit surprising. She said, "You're around too many carcinogens. You have a low immune system now."
A new mission: “So, I hooked up with Firefighter Cancer Support Network.”
(11:16) I became part of the Firefighter Cancer Support Network after I learned a story about a Boston firefighter who essentially went through the same thing I did. When I saw his story, they had made a video of it, and it sounded like the exact same scenario, him getting gassed in a workout, and the next thing you know, he doesn't feel right, goes to the hospital, and now he's stuck in a hospital getting a stem cell transplant. So, I hooked up with Firefighter Cancer Support Network, and now, if any other firefighter across the country has a similar diagnosis, they'll send out an email to those of us who have been through it already and we'll talk to that individual if they're receptive to it.
(11:57) I remember day one, they sent me a Detroit firefighter and I talked to him. And it was really comforting for me and I think for him, for us to talk to each other, because there's a certain way firefighters talk to each other. And the few things I tell other firefighters who are going through this is, "First and foremost, pay attention to everything the doctors and nurses tell you." I let a lot of that stuff just go in one ear and out the other. I thought I would skate through this like I did through everything else, but it's tough. It's going to be tough. But they know what they're doing and you got to roll with the punches.
(12:32) Firefighters are notorious for not taking care of themselves when they're sick. Especially when we're really sick, we want to deny it. And one in four firefighters is bound to contract some sort of cancer in our life. Those are statistics just because the toxins were around, the environments we work in, but we always think it's not going to happen to us. So, we're pretty stubborn when it comes to recognizing these things or asking for help.
Recovery after transplant: “I tried to come back a little bit too early and I really struggled for the first few months…
(12:57) And then after the stem cell transplant, I tried to come back a little bit too early and I really struggled for the first few months, so I learned that I need to go home. I need to nap. The amount of rest you need when you go through something like this, it takes such a toll on your body. And I thought that was something wrong, but everyone told... I ran into other leukemia patients who said, "Oh, no, I slept 20 hours a day." So, I started to realize that was normal. And walking from one end of the hallway to the other and getting tired, that's a normal thing. Your body's starting from scratch. You're basically like a baby. You don't have much of an immune system and everything's starting to grow from scratch once again. So, it took a while for me to integrate back in.
(13:42) But yeah, there was one day where I was at work and the next thing I know, I was like, "Huh, well, that whole shift just went by and I didn't even notice and everything was fine." And I went home and I made dinner and I wasn't tired. And that's when I knew I was coming back to what I was before. And I started to get back into exercising a little bit more because I hadn't been able to do that in two and a half years. And that usually is what keeps me sane at work, is being able to go over to the gym and be on a treadmill for a while or to end up back on my bicycle, back on the road.
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