SYRACUSE – Adrian McDaniel will travel to Chicago on Wednesday to meet the former U.S. Marine Corps Reserve sergeant who saved her life two years ago by donating his stem cells.

The 33-year-old working mother of three has lived in Syracuse her whole life. She graduated from Wawasee High School in 2004, and she and husband Cody will have their 12-year wedding anniversary in May.

Something Wasn’t Right

It was right before Adrian’s 27th birthday when she began feeling tired all the time. She lost about 40 pounds in three or four months. At night she would sweat profusely and her skin was often itchy.

She went to buckle her seat belt one day when she felt a big lump on her collar bone.  

“They did blood tests and an ultra sound and were just trying to figure out what was going on,” she said Wednesday afternoon in her home.

A couple of weeks later, Adrian learned she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The cancer starts in white blood cells called lymphocytes, which are part of the body’s immune system.

She was in disbelief.

“My family doctor called me in and she told me she thought it was cancer. Then she sent me to Goshen and I met with an oncologist there, and they did the biopsies and confirmed it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It was just like, ‘Real life? Is it real life? I just don’t know.’ But it was, sadly,” she recalled.



Aggressive Cancer

Adrian’s first oncologist told her it was one of the “easiest treatable cancers” and she’d be cured within a year. But that’s not what happened.

She did six months of chemotherapy and the cancer appeared to be gone. After a few more chemotherapy sessions, she took eight weeks off.

The cancer had returned by the end of those eight weeks.

“They said it was aggressive. Every time they tried treating it, it would get angry and come back,” Cody said.

Adrian had a stem cell transplant in Indianapolis in 2013, but her cancer returned in 2015.

“It was the third time I got it back. So then I did a clinical trial drug, and it worked a little bit on that but then it came back again in 2016,” she said.

 “I was at my last straw of what to do,” she said, and decided to try Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Chicago.

“I had seen their commercials my whole life growing up,” she said. “... I should have called them from the get-go because I was so comfortable up there, it was the most awesome experience,” she said.

Adrian said when she had her transplant in Chicago, she was in the hospital from Jan. 10 to April 18, 2017.

Cody said there was a lot of “juggling” at this time – working, getting the kids, driving to Chicago for a day and a half, then driving back, and working all week again.

Adrian was put on her own personalized treatment plan, including steps to receive the allogeneic stem cell transplant, which is where stem cells are collected from a donor and transplanted into the patient.

She said the cancer center doctors decided she needed a bone marrow transplant again, but with someone else’s stem cells so she was put on the bone marrow registry. For Adrian’s previous transplant, the doctors used her own stem cells.

“When Adrian arrived at Cancer Treatment Centers of America, she was in trouble,” Dr. Syed Abutalib, assistant director of the Stem Cell Transplant & Cell Therapy Program at the center, said in an email. “Most patients with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma will attain a complete remission after initial treatment and achieve long-term disease control. However, 10 to 15 percent of patients have refractory disease that either does not respond to initial therapy or progresses after an initial partial response; Adrian was one of the 10 to 15 percent.”

He said the Cancer Center administered a combination regimen that was, at that time, in the early stages of development.

“Adrian responded to this regimen, and all of us were delighted to see complete remission for the first in time since her diagnosis,” he said. “... While this was a game changer, our team knew that it would not last. The next big step was an allogeneic transplant, which can actually move towards the eradication of her cancer.”



Be The Match

It’s rare to find a perfect bone marrow match via a sibling for an allogenic stem cell transplant, and a match with unrelated donors increases the risk of a transplant failing. With no family members who were a match, Adrian was put into the National Marrow Donor Program registry.

A match was found in former U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Sgt. Matthew Erbe, of Horeb, Wis. Now 24, he was 21 at the time.

Through Facebook Messenger, Erbe said he had registered for the Be The Match program when he was 18 in boot camp. “It was during the initial phase where you sign a bunch of papers and I hadn’t realized I signed it, but in October 2016 they called and I had no second thoughts at all,” he said.

Erbe said they asked him to do some testing, and he learned he was a match around December 2016. By January 2017 he was donating peripheral blood stem cells.

“The whole process was relatively short, but it was extended for a few months to get the testing done,” he said. “The actual donating was five days of shots and then they took the blood out on the final day for about four hours. It wasn’t really all that painful. It felt like getting a shot with a big needle, but the hospital was great at managing my pain and I actually fell asleep while I was donating and it was over before I knew it,” he recalled.

Adrian wasn’t permitted to know anything about Erbe for a year after the transplant. Then she filled out a bunch of paperwork and signed some release forms so she could get his information and he could get hers. Her information on him is still limited; she knows he’s from Wisconsin, a former Marine Reserve and that he wants to be a conservation officer. Erbe said he was honorably discharged from the Marines in May 2018.

Adrian just had her two-year remission anniversary and she said everything is going well.

“Before it was like I was always in disbelief that they were telling me my cancer came back, and now it’s like, ‘You’re telling me I don’t have cancer? What? That’s crazy,’” Adrian said.

She will have to go every three to six months for checkups because her cancer was so aggressive. If she can make it to five years, her cancer will be “cured” from the transplant, she said. That five-year mark is in 2022.



Chicago Trip

Adrian and Erbe will meet up Wednesday at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. She will speak to the hospital’s board about her experience, and then they’ll have lunch.

“I’m excited to meet Adrian. I’m really glad that she was able to make the fantastic recovery that she did,” Erbe said. “To me, I didn’t donate for the gratification to myself for knowing I would be helping her, it was all about her. I am fortunate enough to get this opportunity to see the after-effects of the procedure and get a chance to meet her.”

Adrian and Erbe say that everyone should register with the National Marrow Donor Program.

“I think anybody that is able should definitely register on the bone marrow transplant because you never know whose life you can save,” Adrian said.  

Erbe said, “It was a wonderful experience, and I would recommend it to everyone to at least register because you never know. ... The people at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America and Be The Match have been wonderful, and I can’t begin to describe the awesome things that they do for people.”