An ongoing journey to health

Jerry Liebermann has overcome many obstacles in his fight against leukemia

In his first year of medical school, Jerry Liebermann was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML).

He was given only three years to live. That was 26 years ago.

After his diagnosis, Jerry soon learned that his best lifesaving option was a pioneering new treatment: a bone-marrow transplant. But lacking a donor whose tissue type was a perfect match to his own, Jerry was unable to find a transplant center that was willing to attempt the procedure.

In 1981, having exhausted other treatment options, Jerry turned to Fred Hutchinson.

"Fred Hutchinson was the only place in the country that would take me," he said. "No one else thought they could help me."

Fred Hutchinson doctors decided to try an experimental transplant procedure in which Jerry's father, whose tissue type was a slight mismatch from his own, would provide the lifesaving marrow.

His care during his four-month stay in Seattle, he said, was "the very best. The doctors — and especially the nurses — were wonderful."

After his transplant, Jerry stayed in an apartment nearby for three months while he recovered. In those days, he remembered, "the nurses made house calls in the morning — you'd stick your arm out from under the covers and they'd draw your blood."

Although he was sent home after 100 days, the doctors weren't optimistic about his prognosis. They saw signs that some of his marrow cells contained the Philadelphia chromosome — an abnormal chromosome that is the hallmark of CML. "But a year later, I came back for a checkup and those cells were completely gone," he said. "That was the first time the doctors had seen that."

Although the transplant worked, that wasn't to be the end of Jerry's battle. Nine years later, he relapsed. His wife, Linda, whom he had met two years after his first CML diagnosis, was five months pregnant at the time. Jerry returned to Fred Hutchinson to undergo a second transplant two weeks after his daughter, Rebekah, was born.

"I definitely had a reason to live through that one," Jerry said. "Having a newborn and a transplant at the same time was a lot to face. It was the hardest thing that ever happened to my family."

Since then, Jerry's disease has resurfaced twice. In 1999, he underwent another experimental procedure that involved an infusion of donor immune cells to attack his cancer. His disease went into remission until last summer, when he was put on Gleevec, a relatively new drug that targets an abnormal protein produced by the Philadelphia chromosome.

Jerry said he is encouraged by the development of drugs like Gleevec and other medical advances that are extending life for cancer patients. "I'm a very strong proponent of cancer research," he said.

Recently, Jerry's health complications made it difficult to continue his career designing instrumentation and software for the medical diagnostics industry. He's confronted that life change with the same resolve he's used to manage his illness.

"My jobs have always been intellectually challenging," he said. "So I looked for new opportunities that are equally challenging — like working with cancer patients and their families."

Today, Jerry uses his skills to help many local charities, including Gilda's Club Seattle, where he serves as volunteer Director of Technology. He also has been a Fred Hutchinson patient-family volunteer, a member of the Volunteer Advisory Council and a facilitator for a Long Term BMT Survivor support group. He also has provided generous financial support for Fred Hutchinson's research efforts.

"If it weren't for the Hutch, I wouldn't be alive," he said. "I'm forever grateful that they enabled me to enjoy all these years and many more to come. If I died tomorrow, I would be grateful for having lived such a wonderful life."

Read more about Chronic Myeloid Leukemia >