Living beyond all expectations
Transplant survivor Steve McCarty lives 29 years after beating the odds
by Stacy James
When he was 12, Steve McCarty was given only a 5 percent chance of surviving aplastic anemia.
But with the help of two stubborn medical residents, loving parents and a large Air Force plane, McCarty reached his 42nd birthday last summer. His 29-year survival makes him the second-longest survivor of a bone-marrow transplant in the world.
McCarty, a Kent, Wash., resident, celebrated another year of beating the odds, joining about 200 former transplant patients worldwide, for a reunion last July at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
McCarty has come a long way since that night he awoke at his home in Los Angeles, hemorrhaging from his gums, his body covered in bruises.
He remembers the six months of his life put on hold: no baseball, climbing trees or doing other typical things boys his age did.
"I knew I was sick," he said. "But I had no inkling that I was going to die."
As he sat next to Debbie, his wife of 19 years, he flipped through his photo album filled with pictures of his days near death and the ones when he began to live again.
Because bone-marrow transplants were still experimental in 1971, doctors were skeptical about trying the procedure on McCarty.
"My parents had the attitude that they had nothing to lose," he said, referring to their decision to go ahead with the transplant.
But McCarty needed to be in Seattle, where he could receive the correct treatment. His primary oncologist refused to advise the trip.
He said it was pointless to fly McCarty so far simply to die 1,200 miles away from home.
The two medical residents lied to Seattle doctors about McCarty's condition and arranged for a U.S. Air Force plane to transport McCarty, his parents and his two sisters to the Emerald City-for $679.
The family squeezed into a one-bedroom apartment across the street from what is now Pacific Medical Center.
The day before his 13th birthday, McCarty received his new marrow from his 14-year-old sister, Kathy. Although another sister and his brother were also matches, Kathy's was the closest.
McCarty remained in isolation for a couple of days and his donor sister developed pneumonia. He also missed the eighth grade.
But McCarty and his wife said they're not looking back, except to remember how they met.
"We would've never met if I hadn't gotten sick," McCarty said.
Debbie McCarty laughed as she remembered Steve's pickup line, in which he mentioned that his "hair fell out early."
Since both the transplant and the time the McCartys first met, stem-cell transplants have replaced bone-marrow transplants, and the former experiment is now a norm.
Once, the procedure had less than a 5 percent success rate, said Mary Flowers, clinical director of the long-term follow-up department at the Hutchinson Center. Now, the odds have increased to 90 percent for people who get donations from siblings and 50 percent for those who get donations from non-siblings, she said.
McCarty said he is looking forward to what lies ahead and remains positive about the past.
He's thankful for "having 29 years of life beyond the years I was supposed to have."
Stacy James is a reporter for the South County Journal in Kent, Wash. This story is reprinted from the Journal by permission.
McCarty among first transplants for aplastic anemia
In 1971, a diagnosis of aplastic anemia was practically a death sentence. The condition-in which blood-cell production by the bone marrow is severely reduced-struck Steve McCarty that year at the age of 12. McCarty was one of the first aplastic anemia patients to receive an allogeneic bone-marrow transplant, that is, a transplant from someone other than the patient's identical twin. Dr. E. Donnall Thomas and his team, which would soon form the foundation of the Hutchinson Center, performed the procedure. As one of the earliest successful transplant patients, McCarty is the longest-surviving aplastic anemia patient to receive a bone-marrow transplant. Only one other transplant patient, treated for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, has survived longer. In celebration of the Hutchinson Center's 25th anniversary, we are paying tribute in Quest to some special former patients who helped researchers pioneer new treatments to battle cancer. Steve McCarty's story is the second in a series of four articles. -Gordon Todd
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