Kevin Donald vividly remembers
turning 25. The date was March 12, 1990.By JAMIE SHANKS of the Weyburn Review
Kevin Donald vividly remembers
turning 25. The date was March 12, 1990.
It was not a good day.
"I found out on my birthday that I had cancer," he says simply. The statement needs little in the way of embellishment.
The McTaggart resident had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a disease of the body's lymphatic system that made headlines when NHL superstar Mario Lemieux successfully fought it himself in 1993. Although Donald's introduction to cancer was swift and typically unpleasant, he also managed to beat it - but it launched him on an odyssey that is continuing even now.
In 1993, it came back. He beat it again. Last September, Donald was diagnosed with cancer for yet a third time and is currently waiting for the green light from doctors to complete the next stage of a stem cell transplant. It's a radical treatment, but it's one he was more than willing to take.
After all, a lot has changed since Donald received that first blow nine years ago. It was a big one, especially to a young man in his prime.
"I was the picture of health. Physically, I was in great shape," he says, recalling the impact the discovery of his Hodgkin's had on him.
"Yeah, it was overwhelming. You think it's over everything was, 'Why me? Why did this have to happen to me? Why am I so sick? Why did I lose so much weight? Why is there so much pain?'"
Fortunately, Kevin Donald is a man with courage and sheer willpower to match. He has tapped into an inner resilience that is nothing short of inspirational.
It hasn't been easy. Donald still bears the scars from radiation treatments that have left him sensitive to sunlight. With a remarkable calm, he and his wife Debbie tally the bewildering and seemingly endless series of tests, operations, drugs and treatments he has received over the years as though they were reading off a grocery list.
"In nine years I've seen damn near everything they can do to a guy," he says.
"Most of them hurt."
The innocent-looking lump on his neck was surgically removed soon after his diagnosis in 1990. It was followed by six months of radiotherapy during which his weight plummeted from 195 to 157 pounds.
"That was brutal," Donald recalls. "It was absolutely horrible I basically wasn't eating for four months."
Although the experience left him weak and exhausted, his recovery actually went very well. An even tougher battle awaited, however: in 1993, he lost his father Marvin to cancer and in April learned that his own cancer had returned, this time in his abdomen in the form of a six-centimetre lump that was migrating out and attaching itself to other organs.
The tests began in earnest. There was a liver biopsy that was conducted twice in search of a usable tissue sample and proved so painful a third attempt could not be made; bone marrow extractions made through holes drilled in his pelvis; CAT scans; lymphangiograms where blue dye was injected between his toes to examine his lymphatic system; and similar gallium tests using radioactive dye.
This would also be Donald's first experience with chemotherapy. One drug, called prednisone, was particularly harsh. "It's really hard on you. It totally screws up all the chemicals in your body."
Mood swings and bouts of the shakes were among the side effects. He also gained considerable weight.
"Sleeping was hard but the eating was good, boy," he jokes.
Donald has found that a lighthearted attitude goes a long way. It has to, he says, when you're throwing up all day long from drug treatments. One amusing distraction was his first MRI test, a kind of live-action X-ray he compared to a scene from the Arnold Schwarzeneggar film Total Recall, where a character passes through a security booth and appears as an animated skeleton.
"Just amazing," he gushes. "That was the coolest thing I've seen."
He describes the loss of his hair - one of the obvious trademarks of chemotherapy - with hardly more than a shrug and reflects on the benefit of no longer needing to shave. But even after the long recovery from his second diagnosis and treatment, Donald's regular checkups to monitor his health were a grim reminder of the seriousness of the situation. "Emotionally, that's very stressful for a person," he explains, "because you basically look at your whole life being over again."
In August 1998, he began losing his appetite and was treated for gastritis. It was all quite nonchalant, he says, because he was doing so well. He had a CAT scan in September, took 10 days of holidays and on Oct. 5 the results were in.
"You could have knocked us off the table with a feather," Donald says of the reaction of he and his wife to the news that the cancer was back for a third time. As such, there were two options: conventional chemotherapy and the stem cell transplant.
With chemo, the cancer would likely be back within two years - but the transplant offered a 65 per cent chance of total recovery.
It wasn't a tough choice to make.
"Hell no," he says without hesitation. "It wasn't an option."
Donald is one of only 20 people undergoing stem cell transplants in Saskatchewan this year (that number will be increased to 60 next year). It involves using stronger types of chemotherapy as his immune system is wiped out in order to harvest the immature white blood cells produced by his bone marrow. In the process his blood cell and platelet counts consequently reach very low levels.
The procedure is not without risks. Two weeks ago he contracted viral pneumonia and his temperature spiked dangerously to 38.4 degrees. The latter stage of the transplant has also been delayed while the tumour continues to shrink to acceptable levels.
Meanwhile Donald's day-to-day routine continues. He likens the experience to a roller coaster: you just pray that when you get to the bottom, you're going to come back up. "There's no trick to it," he says. "It's a lot of heartache."
With it, however, has come a profound wisdom and a new appreciation of life: you can never expect to be here tomorrow in the same condition you're in today never take anything for granted and, lastly, avoid and eliminate all stress - something Donald points to as the reason for the return of his cancer in 1993.
"That's the three things I've learned," he says. Other than that, he adds, it's all in the hands of God.
"There's nothing you can say or do about it. You have to ride the roller coaster to the end."
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