Tuesday, November 21, 2006

By DEBBIE HALL - Bulletin Staff Writer

Following a diagnosis of liver and pancreatic cancer and given three to six months to live, Lonnie Stone decided to donate his body to medical research.

That was in January 1991.

Since then, researchers have isolated a cell in his blood that is considered a killer cell for some types of cancers, and overall, “the last 15 years have been the best years of my life,” Stone said.

While he gives “all the glory to God” for his healing, Stone said it was “a rocky journey.”

Recalling the experience, Stone reported having gastric problems that required medical treatment. Instead of improving, Stone’s health condition worsened.

“I was losing weight real fast,” he said. “I lost a pound a day. In 30 days, I had lost 30 pounds.”

However, Stone did not feel poorly, and recalls going to work the midnight shift at DuPont on January 1, 1991. In the security office where he has worked for the last 29 years, Stone even visited the exercise room and used the stair stepper.

After a few exercises, though, Stone’s right side began hurting “real bad. Worse than it had hurt before,” but Stone managed to finish his shift, getting in bed about 9 a.m. the following morning.

Around noon, Stone’s wife of 47 years, Doris, noticed his skin was a yellow tone.

“The jaundice had set in and the next thing I knew, I was at Duke,” Stone said, adding that he quickly had surgery there.

Waking up from the anesthesia, doctors visited Stone’s room and said “we’re sorry. It’s too late,” he said.

The medical team also confirmed cancer in the liver and pancreas and “said it had eat up both of ‘em,” Stone said he was told. “There’s nothing else we can do. We had to close you back up” because the disease was inoperable, the doctors told him.

Recalling the prognosis, “I can’t describe in words what a shock I felt,” Stone said, adding that Michael Landon, who starred in TV series Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie, was diagnosed with the same disease and during the same week as Stone.

Landon “chose a vegetarian diet, and I remember thinking, ‘He’s got money enough he can probably buy his life,’” Stone said. Within months, Landon died, and “I thought my time will be just any day now.”

Meanwhile, Stone was faced with a monumental decision after doctors said he could opt for traditional treatments: “Do nothing or donate my body to research.” Although making the decision was a bit of a struggle, Stone decided on the latter option, thinking “maybe I can help someone else through this.”

Lab technicians first tried an experimental therapy on Stone called Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF). Stone was the first human to try the treatment, which entered his body through an IV.

“As it went in my body, it felt like it was exploding,” Stone said. “I felt like my body was coming apart.”

After two or three days of treatments, Stone was bleeding from his eyes, ears and other orifices, he said.

“And after they saw my heart was going to explode, they took me off that treatment,” Stone said.

Lab techs then started him on an immunotherapy program combined with Cisplatin and Adriamycin, two strong chemotherapy drugs.

“This treatment was not as bad, but I had to lay on my back the whole time,” Stone said.

Bags taped to either side of his body were hooked into his bowel ducts. They had to be changed daily and after a while, the tape irritated his skin. He also had tubes in either side to allow for drainage.

There also were other problems, such as his incision not healing correctly, but Stone relied on his family, church and friends for support, prayer and the strength of his faith.

Stone’s daughter, Vickie Morley, was a nurse practitioner in oncology and hematology in Texas, “but I never dreamed I’d have to use her” expertise, Stone said. However, she flew home each week to check on her father.

Son Terry also came home regularly from classes at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Stone said.

During the 18 months following surgery, Stone returned to Duke to have the tubes changed as usual.

On his last trip, a nurse told him the medical team had to take its time “because we’ve never done this before. The undertaker has always done it” in the past, Stone said he was told when the tubes were removed.

The tubes were taken out for the last time, never to be replaced.

“They let me come home and said I was completely healed,” Stone said of his 18-month ordeal. He had one more surgery a few months afterward to remove a portacathe planted in his neck which allowed for the IV therapy.

Initially, Stone returned every three months for a checkup. The time between checkups was extended first to six-months and later, to a year.

During subsequent checkups, Stone remains cancer-free, and while that may be surprising to some, Stone never doubted it.

In fact, he told the doctors, “the Lord made that ole liver and pancreas and He can fix them.”

A doctor told him his faith would go a long way towards beating the disease, Stone said.

And it has.

For the past 15 years, Stone has made the rounds at churches and organizations, sharing his story, a story that improved in 1996, when Stone returned for a five-year check-up.

“A rare cell has miraculously appeared in your body,” Stone said a nurse told him. “It’s a killer cell and they (researchers) think they can take that cell and drive cancer” out of the body, Stone said.

A killer cell was discovered in Stone’s white T cells and researchers “developed a vaccine to dry up cancer,” he said. The vaccine has been used in two studies.

In layman’s terms “and the best I can explain it,” Stone said researchers put his killer T cell in with a cell from a cancer victim. The two cells remain in the lab for a period of time, Stone said, and the infected cell is then returned to the cancer victim.

If successful, the cells “dry up the cancer,” Stone said, and he signed required paperwork, stating that he would not receive any profits, etc., from his blood.

Stone then was hooked up to blood machines, one of which pumped his blood from one arm, strained it through hoops of hoses to isolate and remove the cell. The blood is then pumped back into Stone’s body.

He periodically had this procedure done until 1999, when “they told me they had drawn enough cells from my body that they could reproduce them” in a laboratory, Stone said.

The experience “is mind-boggling. It’s awesome,” Stone said. “I have been so sick, I can’t even tell you, but the things that have developed from this sickness have been great.

“I had great friends and a great church backing me,” Stone added. “I’ve found if you have friends and if you have the Lord, you’ve got everything. Material wealth is not very important.”