Battalion chief returns to fire duty after marrow transplant

Doctors told Battalion Chief Kevin Wise it would be at least a year before he could return to work at the Stanislaus Consolidated Fire Protection District after undergoing a bone marrow transplant for leukemia.

Three months after the surgery – still on anti-rejection drugs, his body in a fragile state as it regenerated a new immune system – Wise asked his doctor if he’d clear him to go back to work.

“He told me adamantly ‘no’ and ‘don’t ask me again until the six-month mark,’ ” Wise said.

On July 15, Wise returned to work at Stanislaus Consolidated’s Station 26 in Riverbank, just 10 days after the six-month mark.

“It feels so good to be back,” he said Friday.

It took a lot of work and determination to get there. Wise, 44, spent a month in the hospital after his transplant at Stanford University Hospital and had daily checkups for three months after that. He endured it all just after the death of his mother, who died Christmas Eve, one week before Wise was admitted to the hospital.

His mom had been battling lung cancer but was doing well. She brought him lunch and dinner every day he was at Kaiser Modesto Medical Center for chemotherapy and blood transfusions leading up to his surgery at Stanford. On his last day at Kaiser, Wise said he noticed his mom was a little out of breath.

Wise was supposed to be admitted to Stanford on Dec. 18, but because of a runny nose, the surgery was postponed.

Initially frustrated by the delay, Wise said it turned out to be a blessing because on his way home he got a call from his dad that his mom was being admitted to the hospital for pneumonia.

“Had I been (at Stanford) I wouldn’t have been able to say goodbye to my mom,” he said. “They had to put her on a ventilator and the last thing she said (to her doctor) was, ‘You take care of my boy.’ ”

After his surgery, Wise’s wife was his caretaker and constant companion. They rented an apartment near the hospital and relatives cared for their two teenage children back home in Modesto.

“The key to me getting better (was) any chance I could get, even when I felt like crap, I would get up and grab my IV pole” and go for a walk, Wise said.

Weakened from the disease, chemotherapy and spending months in bed, Wise said, he had trouble walking a block down the street. He’d get there and then need help from his wife to get back.

But little by little he regained his strength, and on the Fourth of July, in celebration of the six-month milestone, Wise went for a 12.5-mile jog.

“I took off one morning and came back 3 1/2 hours later,” he said.

Wise is in remission from cancer for the second time.

He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2011, on the same day and in the same hospital his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. The intensive chemotherapy that cured him of the disease also is what caused the leukemia, for which he was diagnosed in September.

Both are types of blood cancer. For the multiple myeloma, Wise got a transplant of his own stem cells, but for the leukemia he needed a donor.

Wise’s relatives and many of his fellow firefighters joined the bone marrow registry in hope of being a match, but ultimately it was a stranger who gave him the lifesaving bone marrow.

To pay it forward, Wise helped organize and promote two local bone marrow registries in December, less than a month before his surgery. More than 200 people signed up, Wise said.

All Wise knows about the man who donated to him is that he’s 28. The donor registry requires one to three years from the time of surgery before the donor or recipient can meet. Wise said he can attempt to contact his donor in January.

“Hopefully I can meet him and tell him thanks, because without him I wouldn’t be here today,” he said.

This story was originally published July 24, 2016 at 6:12 PM with the headline "Battalion chief returns to fire duty after marrow transplant."