Images courtesy of Eric Drew
But he quickly learned how difficult the experience would be. Drew possessed the Philadelphia chromosome, a mutation that would make his cancer even more difficult to fight. Fearing that his veins would collapse, the doctors injected the chemotherapy cocktail directly into his spine and heart. The experience was brutal. Drew felt as if his skin was burning and his head was going to explode. The cancer, meanwhile, was already ravaging his body.
Drew was not just fighting a disease, he was fighting a system. He had to be his own advocate. Just before his treatment, he heard from his half sister, Alexa Gregory Martin, who worked as a physician’s assistant in Seattle, that his radiation would almost certainly leave him sterile. Yet no doctor had suggested that he bank his sperm. Against their advice, he delayed his treatment while he banked sperm. He was convinced that one day he would see the birth of his own kids.
As the illness and treatment progressed and winter turned to spring, Drew would have precipitous highs and lows. One night Nicole’s phone rang, and it was Drew, sounding in good spirits. “Do you want to drive up?” he said. “Let’s watch a movie.” Nicole slipped into her pajamas and grabbed her overnight bag. Maybe this wouldn’t have to end, she thought; maybe they would go back to normal after all. When she arrived at the Stanford medical center an hour later, however, her dreams were quickly dashed. Sirens were going off in the hallway, and an urgent voice came over the intercom: “Code blue 39A!” Wait, Nicole thought, that’s Eric’s room.
Nicole walked in to a nightmare. Drew was surrounded by a half dozen hospital workers. They were giving him chest compressions. His body was shaking uncontrollably. Nicole was in shock, unable to speak or cry or move. “You have to leave,” one of the workers told her. A bad reaction to an antifungal drug had caused his heart rate to fall abruptly, but they were able to stabilize him. The experience, and the thought of weeks of harrowing treatments to follow, took their toll. When Nicole went into the ICU later that night to see Drew, he was crying.
“I just don’t want you to go through this,” he said. “You have everything going for you. You don’t have to be in this situation. I want you to know you can leave whenever you want.”
“I can’t,” Nicole replied. “I’m too invested in this. No matter what, I’ll be here. I’ll support you.”
Though the chemo and radiation had prolonged his life, by the summer of 2003 Drew knew the treatments alone were not going to save him. For that, he needed a bone marrow transplant. Bone marrow contains immature stem cells that can grow into three types of cells: red blood cells, to transport oxygen; white blood cells, for fighting infections; and platelets, to facilitate clotting when needed.
In a transplant, healthy stem cells are harvested from a donor and infused intravenously into the recipient. The healthy new cells then find their way to the bone marrow, where, if all goes well, they engraft and provide a new immune system. For Drew’s specific disease, the typical long-term survival rate for a transplant ranges from 40 percent to 70 percent—but for someone who is Philadelphia positive, as Drew was, the survival rate is lower, 10 percent to 50 percent. Success depends on how well the donor’s and recipient’s chromosomes match; the better the match, the greater the odds of survival. According to the National Marrow Donor Program, depending on race, between 60 percent and 87 percent of potential recipients find at least one match, and a total of more than 260 patients receive transplants every month.
Finding a match, however, would be an uphill battle for Drew. The optimal match—a full sibling—was not an option for him, since he had none. And a unique protein in his blood narrowed the pool even more. He needed all the help he could get.
Drawing on his years of entrepreneurial skills and quarterback leadership, Drew spent the summer organizing a bone marrow drive. He sent e-mails around the world to everyone he knew and began getting checks from as far away as South Korea. Friends were organizing prayer chains from Jerusalem to Africa. Drew, though not holistically minded in the past, went full steam: He started doing yoga and taking megadose multivitamins. He went into the woods with a Mongolian shaman who burned a goat carcass on his behalf. Drew even took to the street, sitting on a busy corner in a chair and handing out flyers. He soon had 1,000 volunteers working to help him and had raised an astonishing $250,000, which he used to start the Eric Drew Foundation to help others. The emotional support was not just incredible, he felt, but lifesaving, a lesson for anyone fighting a disease. Don’t just lie back, he wanted to tell people. Get out there and do something, whatever you can.
