JACK SMEDLEY
The bronze medal was within Jack Smedley’s grasp this summer at the National Kidney Foundation U.S. Transplant Games. And then, he ran out of gas. Tennis is like that. One moment, you’re on top, and then the ball refuses to clear the net.
“I told my wife I should have done better,” Smedley said, and she chided him for his competitiveness: “Yeah, Jack, but you could be sitting in an urn on a mantle right now.”
Competing in the transplant games was a joyful reminder of a long journey that began in 1983, when, at 37, Smedley was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia and told he had six months to live. He stuck around for more than 100 months before receiving a bone marrow transplant at the Hutchinson Center in 1992.
Smedley, his wife, Iva, and their three children, Scott, Karen and Chris, chronicled their experiences in The Journey Back: A Survivor’s Guide to Leukemia. Some of their thoughts excerpted from the book:
Iva: “Leukemia! How I hated the word! As a young child, I had learned that it was a very frightening word … my grand-father had died from leukemia. How ironic that my husband also had leukemia. Would he die, too? I didn’t even want to say the word leukemia.”
Jack: “My sense of peace was a combination of my religious beliefs, my contentment with my life, and the fact that I had prepared myself to the limits of my capabilities. Often I would think, this is the fight of my life and I’m ready.”
Iva: “How must Jack be feeling? I couldn’t believe this was happening to him—to us—to our family. He was young, just 37, and we had so much to do in our lives. Our children needed a father. How could we tell them what was happening?”
Chris: “My father had done so much to prepare himself for this difficult journey, but how were we to prepare ourselves? We were spectators anticipating every moment and hanging on to every new piece of information that was to come along.”
Scott: “The first day that he started to have an increasing white cell count was a “red letter” event. This meant that my bone marrow was reproducing in his body. His progress was slow but, viewed over weeks, was an amazing demonstration of how the human body can come back from such a horrific condition.”
Jack: “Before, during and after my transplant, Iva was the stable rock that kept the family going. I never saw her show the emotional strain she was under while I was in Seattle for my transplant. On our follow-up visit, however, as we were leaving the Hutchinson Center, she went over and sat down on a bench and began to cry. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, ‘I kept this in for a year.’”
Karen: “You never want to say that good comes from bad, but this event in my life brought me closer to my parents thanI had ever been before.”
Jack: “My journey back from leukemia and the transplant ended Jan. 4, 1995, in Richmond, Va., when a daughter was born to Danielle and Scott.
“This fulfilled the final commitment that I had made at their wedding. Holding my granddaughter in my arms, I said, ‘Welcome to the world, Summer Anne; I’m your grandfather and I love you.’”
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