After attending a New York Jets game in 2019, Jim O’Brien, then 24, noticed his knee was swollen. Then he had a fever and the chills. After visiting his doctor he received a stunning diagnosis: leukemia.
“I thought, ‘That’s weird,’ and I tried to stay off of it. Then a couple days later, my other knee started swelling up,” he said. “Then I started feeling fevers and chills.” “It’s mostly in children so between childbirth and the age of 16 to 20. Then it becomes less common, but it’s still a disease we see in adults,” Dr. Hagop Kantarjian, professor and chair of the department of leukemia at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, and one of O’Brien’s doctors, told TODAY. “The fact that he is between 20 and 30 is not uncommon for acute lymphocytic leukemia.”
“I had a lot going for me. It was going really well with my job. My career was really taking off. I had an apartment with my best friend,” he said. “It was painful.”“What I’ve had to do in the past two years, after the rug gets pulled out from underneath you, is you want to pick up the pieces as soon as you can,” he said.“I went into the doctor for some routine bloodwork. My counts were low. He was suspicious. He biopsied me and confirmed the worst,” he said.
“We proceeded with the transplant,” Kantarjian said. “His chance of a cure is much better … we gave him more innovative treatments for a longer period of time before the transplant.”
Wishing you all the best - a life full of fun, healthy, happy days!!
My husband’s leukemia diagnosis at age 24 came because he went to the doctor for a sinus infection. We are thankful for the doctor who ran blood work because he looked pale. 24 years later, we are still grateful for that doctor and all the others after him.