Cancer and Clinical Services Patient Stories

Always moving forward

It was just a sore back, so he headed to the chiropractor. After all, Andrew Kovaleski was young, active and healthy. A few weeks later, things escalated.

First was a trip to the emergency room for digestive issues. Then he woke up one morning and couldn’t move his legs. Scans revealed a tumor blocking his spinal cord. After the tumor was successfully removed through surgery, it was time to figure out how it got there, so Andrew was transferred to the OSUCCC – James. “Those first few days were a bit of a blur, and I’m not good with the play-by-play, but I spent about two weeks in bed recovering from surgery and going through tests to find a diagnosis,” he says. “That’s when we found out that I had leukemia.

“It’s a bit weird to say it, but everything couldn’t have come at a better time. If it had been two months earlier, I would have still been in college. Two months later and I would have been headed to grad school. As it turns out, I was able to deal with everything as it came, and I just put my trust in the experts.”

In Andrew’s case, his experts included his hematologist, Alice Mims, MD, to help him beat leukemia, and a team of physical and occupational therapists at Dodd Rehabilitation Hospital to help him learn to walk again, since he could no longer move from the waist down.

Dr. Mims explained to Andrew and his family that with his particular acute leukemia, his body was making too many eosinophils in his bone marrow, which are a type of white blood cells. “My eosinophil levels were absurdly high,” he says. “And while Dr. Mims was honest and told me that I might need a bone marrow transplant in the future, she was confident that a targeted medication could also be effective at blocking those eosinophils. I’d just need to stay on it for the rest of my life.

“She made sure we understood all of my options, and we zeroed in on that treatment. It worked, and now I just continue to take my medication every other day. I never needed any chemo, just that one pill.”

Some may call it youthful optimism, but Andrew faced his rehabilitation with the same straight-forward, positive approach. “I didn’t have any reason to believe I wouldn’t walk again,” he says. “I just needed to regain my strength, and the therapists were really good at setting small goals, so I never got frustrated.” During two weeks of inpatient rehabilitation at Dodd, followed by outpatient rehabilitation at Martha Morehouse Outpatient Care, he took it literally one step at a time and did every exercise recommended. By the end of that first year, Andrew ran a quarter-marathon.

He also went on to earn a master’s degree in performance saxophone from Youngstown State University and now teaches saxophone and operates a successful piano tuning business.

“I only see Dr. Mims for follow-ups now, just to make sure my levels are staying in check,” he says. “She still takes all the time I need to talk about my blood tests, explain any changes and set our goals going forward.

“I was in crisis mode at the beginning of all this, so I really didn’t worry about understanding everything. Now I do, and I continue to trust her experience.

“She told me she’d get me where I needed to be, and she’s done just that.”