'It Was the Fight of My Life'

Jack Smedley balances a strong, competitive spirit with a pensive side

When the old Jack Smedley comes out-the Jack of 12-hour workdays, the competitive Jack who plays hard to win on the tennis court-it's up to his wife, Iva, to remind him about what's important.

Such was the case this summer, when Smedley was competing for the bronze medal in tennis at the National Kidney Foundation U.S. Transplant Games.

"I was ahead in that match for the bronze, but I ran out of gas," Smedley recalled. "I told my wife I should have done better. And she said, 'Yeah, Jack, but you could be sitting in an urn on a mantle right now.'"

"That sure put things into perspective," he said, laughing at the memory. "To think that I can still play tennis after all I have gone through, that one day I had been given only six months to live … yes, I am grateful just to be playing the game."

Smedley was only 37 when he was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia in 1983. He was working long hours in Pittsburgh, a hospital administrator whose career was wide open ahead of him.

"It was the fight of my life," Smedley remembered. "My only hope was that technology would improve enough to offer me a cure before it was too late."

Smedley, who went on to write a book about his struggle against CML, "The Journey Back, A Survivor's Guide to Leukemia," finally received a transplant at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 1992, with his son, Scott, as the bone marrow donor.

"The Journey Back," the poet Maya Angelou wrote on the book's back cover, "is for each one of us who, whether diagnosed or not, lives under the threat of dying from a life-threatening disease."

Smedley is proud of his book, and he's not shy about sharing his story with others, including how his disease impacted his family. But he really perks up when he talks about tennis and the Transplant Games.

This year, he noticed that among the 1,300 athletes who participated in the games in Pittsburgh, there were very few bone marrow transplant patients. Held every two years since 1990, the games attract thousands of athletes, their families and friends. The next games will be held in Madison, Wis., in 2010.

"I think we need to see more athletes who were treated at the Hutchinson Center," he said. "You meet so many people, and the stories that you hear are so amazing. There were so many times when there wasn't a dry eye in the place."

Smedley did manage to win a medal at the games, a silver in doubles in the 60-69 age category with partner George Shimpeno, a kidney transplant survivor.

"I was still exhausted after two weeks, but it was worth it," he said. Already, he's looking forward to the next games.

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	2005 Patient Reunion Photo Gallery