COLUMBUS, Ohio — It all started with back pain that seemed to be progressively getting worse.
“My back, the structure of my body, was like starting to deteriorate, and I could tell,” he said. “I'm tall, so when I started to lean over, and the pain and things of that nature, I'm like, yo, something's going on.”
His longtime love Sonia Grant noticed, too. And she was right there to encourage him to get it checked.
When he did, doctors found holes in his spine where his bone had deteriorated. He had a vertebroplasty procedure to have those holes filled with bone cement. But that was not the end of his journey. In fact, it was really only the beginning.
“After the surgery, he was okay for about a month, then I saw him (leaning) over again, and he couldn’t get off the bed one day,” Grant said. “I said, uh uh, we’re going back up there (to the hospital). There’s something wrong.”
And something was. Howard was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer that forms in the plasma cells.
“I don’t want to be the woe is me,” Howard said. “I want to be the success story for somebody, for the world to look at, like, that man went through a situation, and he made it.”
And he’s making it so far, with the help of Grant. He’s been doing weekly chemotherapy treatments and taking daily medication. Meanwhile, Grant is making sure he’s eating his fruits and veggies and drinking plenty of water, too.
“If you’re not up to the challenge, I will help you get there, I will,” Grant said. “Because failure is just not a thing when it comes to fighting something like cancer. You gotta fight, you just gotta fight.”
This fight will culminate with a major procedure later this fall via OhioHealth’s new Blood and Marrow Transplant Program. Howard will be one of the first patients to receive an autologous stem cell transplant, meaning the procedure will use his own cells.
Dr. Yvonne Efebera, the medical director for the program, explains this process is different than a procedure using donor cells.
“BMT, blood and marrow transplant, is a process where, certain diseases require this, where non-functioning, deficient bone marrow or cancer cells are eliminated by giving high-dose chemotherapy, with or without radiation, and then replaced by new, healthy cells,” Dr. Efebera said.
She’s been treating Howard throughout this process and points out that this is one of the benefits of the new program. Before, patients who needed transplants would have to be sent to other healthcare systems. Now, they can go from start to finish with the same clinical team.
“Marc always wanted to be the first,” she joked. “He’s anxious to have his stem cells to be the first collected and the first admitted.”
Both Howard and Grant are up to the challenge.
“It’s a battle,” Grant said. “We’re halfway through the battle, and so, we’re going to get all the way to the end of the battle. Bruised, not broken. But we’re in the battle. But we’re going to get through it.”