ORONO, Maine — Two years ago, Ethan Hawes started a marathon that he still hasn’t finished.
Though, he just passed a major mile marker.
“I just took my last class. It didn’t hit me until I just said that,” Hawes said Friday, sitting on a bench under a tree on the University of Maine’s mall. The 23-year-old will graduate along with nearly 1,700 fellow students during UMaine commencement ceremonies on May 9.
Two years ago, this seemed “ludicrous,” he said.
Hawes was studying abroad in Spain during the spring semester of 2013. A dedicated athlete, he ran the Madrid Marathon toward the close of his semester overseas. He crossed the finish line with a time of 4 hours, 17 minutes on April 28, 2013, with a shooting pain in his hip.
He wrote it off as a runner’s ache, but the nagging pain persisted, so he decided to get it checked, having returned stateside in May.
On July 3, 2013, he got a call from his doctor. X-rays revealed a fist-sized tumor on his hip. It was eroding the bone. Hawes was referred to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
On July 19, 2013, doctors there confirmed he had a plasmacytoma on his hip, but they hoped to get rid of it with surgery and a round of chemotherapy.
But further scans revealed a smaller cytoma on Hawes’ skull, changing his diagnosis to multiple myeloma.
“Everything just stopped,” Hawes said of what happened after he received the news. “It was just this deafening roar of white noise. It was slow motion.”
Multiple myeloma forms in the blood, attacking plasma cells, the cells that help your body fight off infections by forming antibodies to fight germs and viruses. Three-quarters of patients diagnosed are 55 years old or older, with a median age of 69, according to research. Obesity increases the risk of multiple myeloma, which is twice as likely to affect African-Americans as caucasians.
It’s not likely to strike a healthy 20-something who just ran a marathon, but Hawes is evidence that it can. Multiple myeloma isn’t curable, but it is manageable with treatment.
“It was winning the lottery in the worst kind of way,” he said.
With the next school year fast approaching, Hawes, his doctors and his family agreed that he should go back to school. They agreed it would help him stay mentally, emotionally and physically strong as he endured treatment.
So he returned to the UMaine business school.
Hawes’ chemotherapy treatments weren’t as intense as some. He went to Eastern Maine Medical Center twice per week, one week on, one week off. He took pills each night before bed. He didn’t lose his hair, and he felt relatively healthy and active as long as he was able to take an occasional nap.
The stem cell transplant was harder.
First, he had to endure a “conditioning chemo” that wiped out his red and white blood cells to prepare him for the transplant. He then had to go into isolation because the process essentially destroyed his immune system. After 2½ weeks of recovery in the hospital, he was allowed to go home, where he contracted pneumonia. His weakened immune system struggled to fight back against the infection.
“It made me realize how vulnerable I really was,” Hawes said. “The adrenaline rush I’d had since my diagnosis had worn off.”
Still, he recovered and his immune system rebuilt itself after the transplant. He had surgery to fix the damage the cancer had caused to his hip.
Hawes said doctors have told him he isn’t showing any current signs of cancer, but he’ll continue treatments just to be safe and, hopefully, keep its resurgence at bay.
Hawes said his professors were supportive, allowing him to take a modified course load and checking up with him regularly to make sure the work wasn’t becoming too much of a strain when combined with his treatments. He credits his friends, former roommates and family for their help as well.
“There have just been so many angels that have carried me through this,” he said.
Hawes turns 24 on June 5.
“But the day I’ll celebrate even more is June 23,” he said.
That’s the one-year anniversary of the day his immune system “restarted” after his stem cell transplant in 2014. When his cells started replicating, he officially went into remission, he said. Hawes has been getting re-immunized, receiving repeat shots of the ones he got as a child.
When he steps on stage next weekend to receive his degree and shake hands with professors and university officials, he said he’ll feel “empowered.”
“I don’t know if I’ll cry,” Hawes said. “Maybe it won’t hit me, maybe it will, but I know that once I hold that diploma, it will be one of the most significant moments of my life so far, because of what it symbolizes and what it means.”
His parents, younger sister and grandfather, a former UMaine poultry professor, will be in attendance.
He credits his classmates, professors and family for helping him through the toughest, most uncertain times of his treatment. The teachers who gave him leeway and advice, the friends who gave him rides, and the family that gave him love.
“This was my sanctuary,” Hawes said Friday, looking out over the mall, where students played frisbee, slacklined and sat under trees, studying for finals under the spring sun. He said he feels “more engaged and more present in the moment.” Colors even seem more vivid.
Hawes is working on a book about his experiences during the past two years, and his school played a big role in that, he said. He wants to pursue a career in the medical device industry after graduation, seeing as medical devices, including the one permanently installed in his hip, have played a big part in his life during the past two years.
“It’s in those classrooms over the past year or two that I’ve felt at my best and at my safest — with the professors and the students and just being a normal college kid,” Hawes said. “When outside of there, it just felt so different.”
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.