StemCell Therapy

CHASE BOTTORF/THE EXPRESSLocal relay teams walked in the relay to help spread cancer awareness and help fundraising efforts for the American Cancer Society.

LOCK HAVEN Clinton County recently held its 27th annual Relay For Life in Riverview Park, Woodward Township.

The yearly fundraising event for the American Cancer Society, co-event lead by Roxanne Embick and Shannon Miller, brought in a large crowd with generous donations to boot. Fundraising that is done all foes to the American Cancer Society.

The majority of the money raised stays locally as advocacy for support, according to Roxanne. The other portion of the money goes towards cancer research, she added.

Relay For Life began as a 24-hour ongoing event which always had a member of each relay team walking the track for those 24 hours. The reasoning for the constant 24-hour walking resonates from cancer patients having to live with cancer 24 hours a day, according to Roxanne.

It was in honor of that. Now they have gotten a little relaxed on that but the teams are here and they do walk the track and do fundraisers, she added.

Relay For Life has been a national event since 1985. It has now become more globalized internationally in countries like Canada and Mexico.

Eight relay teams were signed up for 2022s Clinton County Relay For Life with six of those teams participating in this years events.

Not all teams are required to come and set up a site but they do their fundraising through the year, said Roxanne.

The last two years, the Relay For Life coordinators have been trying to catch up due to missing a year with COVID in 2020. Coordinators are hoping to try and make up some of that.

To date, the Clinton County Relay For Life has raised over $30,000. Their ultimate goal is to raise at least a total of $77,000.

Hopefully we can get more people. We can take donations for this year up until August and we do have a couple of events happening throughout the year, Roxanne said.

Cancer survivors attended the day long event with a couple sharing their own stories to the public. Of the survivors whos stories were told, Roxannes own husband, Earl Embick, was a survivor with his own story to tell. In late 2010, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

Roxanne addressed her husbands story to everyone who attended during the survivor event meal.

In November of that year, he woke up in the morning to an upset stomach and a headache. Thinking it was a stomach bug, he tried to go to work but had to leave early due to his sickness, she said. When Earl returned home, Roxanne, who is a nurse, said he had signs of menangitus.

They went to the hospital and discovered that he had bacterial menangitus, a rare form as opposed to the more common viral menangitus, according to Roxanne. However, menangitus would turn out to be part of Earls ailments.

He went through treatment and got better, however it was discovered that his kidneys were not functioning properly, Roxanne said. When we went back to the infectious disease doctor after he was discharged from the hospital, he was concerned and said that he had stage three kidney failure.

Doctors ran tests and found that the protein in Earls urine was four times higher than it should have been, she added. Another test was ran and the results came back positive for multiple myeloma a bone marrow cancer.

There are bad cells in there and they basically over grow, kind of like weeds in a garden. They choke out your ability to make white and red cells and all those things, Roxanne said. It was unusual because most of the time multiple myeloma normally doesnt affect people who are in their forties, which is how old Earl was at the time.

Multiple myeloma typically affects patients who are older in their sixties and seventies. According to Roxanne, there is no understanding of what the root cause of multiple myeloma is.

Since Earl was younger than usual myeloma patients, doctors were able to do the necessary treatments on him. On his 41st birthday in December of 2010, he and Roxanne went to Ohio State University to an oncologist who specializes in myeloma. He received his treatment and was put on two medications, which he took twice a week for eight weeks.

His numbers didnt come down as much has they had hoped but that was okay, Roxanne said about the eight weeks of treatment. In April, we went back for his stem cell transplant. Fortunately they were able to use his own stem cells.

Before his transplant, Earl had to get three shots a day for five days to pack his bone marrow with stem cells. When the transplant was ready to be done, it took six total hours to harvest the stem cells, according to Roxanne.

In May of 2011, he went back to the hospital for high dose chemo therapy and two days later received a rescue stem cell transplant. Though from the transplant, Earl ended up having a complication, according to Roxanne. He had engraftment syndrome which is when stem cells start engrafting and the body sees it as a rejection becoming sick with a high fever.

He made it through everything. He was in the hospital for 17 days we stayed in Ohio until July, Roxanne said. He started maintenance chemo therapy that September called REVLIMID (aka Lenalidomide) he was on that maintenance for six years.

Earl has now been off of all treatments for the last five years and is still without any elements of cancer, she added.

I know as caregivers, we have a very important role to play, we have to be an advocate, we have to make sure theyre getting to their appointments on time and keeping track of them because chemo can make the brain not work like youd like it to work that is all important. He was as much my caregiver as I was his, Roxanne expressed.

The 27th Annual Clinton County Relay For Life lasted from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. last Saturday and was filled with a whole day of events, spreading cancer awareness. More events through the Relay For Life are set throughout the rest of the year.

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Clinton County Relay For Life holds annual event in Riverview Park - Lock Haven Express

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