Laughing in the face of Leukemia

It was late February in Honolulu, Hawaii, 70 degrees, sunshine, blue skies and Rusty Bruns was thinking about buying a DeLorean.

Life is good, right?

Not really.

Bruns, a Naval supply officer was lying in a hospital bed on the eighth floor of Tripler Army Medical Center, the largest military hospital in the Asian and Pacific Rim region, juggling his thoughts.

Following a long weekend of uncertainty and inconclusive tests, Bruns’ doctor diagnosed him with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (A.L.L.), a fast-acting form of cancer found predominantly in children that “without treatment, from onset to death, can (kill you) in eight weeks,” according to Bruns.

It was 1991.

Bruns was 29 years old.

The previous 72 hours were surreal. After starting his Friday with a morning jog, Bruns began experiencing chest pain.

“I went up a flight of stairs and my pulse went to 180 and it was at that point that I went to see a doctor,” he said. “I thought something was wrong with my heart. I felt like my chest was going to explode.”

Doctors immediately identified “immature cells” during a routine blood test, a sign something was wrong. Test results were ambiguous, so erring on the side of caution doctors admitted Bruns to the hospital.

“That was a Friday night and I didn’t see a doctor again until Monday morning,” Bruns remembers. “I had IV’s in me – to me – for no apparent reason. I was not allowed to leave, I was not allowed to drive. I was more concerned than anything, because I didn’t know for three days what was going on.”

Just six weeks earlier, Bruns underwent a full physical and was given a clean bill of health. The fact that he was now “They caught it within six weeks,” he said. “Actually if I hadn’t been running, it may have been another four weeks before they found it. Which at that point the (blood) counts would have been significantly low and it would be very dangerous.”

Enter Laverne Puckett, a 30-something staff nurse at Tripler. She has been through this scenario with patients more often than she’d probably like to consider. It’s more than the diagnosis – Leukemia – it’s the psychological affects. Puckett spoke honestly about an illness that will reportedly take the life of 22, 280 Americans in 2006 *, posing a candid question to Bruns. “She sat down and talked to me about what I was going to do with my life, if this was the end of my life?” Bruns said.

“I think I’m going to buy a DeLorean,” he told her without hesitation. “I always thought those were pretty cool.”

Two weeks later Puckett was back in Bruns’ hospital room with a framed picture of a DeLorean. “She brought that in to me and said, ‘this is for when you get out of the hospital, here’s your DeLorean,” he said.

A LONG WINTER

Winter turned to Spring as Bruns watched the seasons of his own life shift counter clockwise, from Spring to Winter. Doctors, nurses, friends and family came and went as 40 days of chemotherapy dragged on. Bruns physically withered from 188 to 148 pounds. He had lost 40 pounds in 40 days.

Then, it got worse.

“I got out of the hospital after 40 days of treatment,” Bruns said, “but before my next round of treatment I got an infection in my mouth (and throat) and couldn’t eat. My face swelled up to almost twice the size. So I was back in the hospital and they fed me through IV’s.” The prognosis turned dire.

A healthy human has an average blood platelet count ranges from 250,000-400,000. * Platelets play a vital role in blood clotting. At 20,000, far below the norm, the human body is in danger of experiencing a cerebral hemorrhage. Bruns’ platelet count had plunged to 2,000.

Talks of a DeLorean were soon replaced with prayer and the hope of survival. “The infection had really taken, they told me I was going to die,” said Bruns.

“I look back on my life … (long pause) … I’ve done a lot that other people have never had the opportunity to do,” he said. “I was satisfied with what I was able to do. If that was the time that God wanted me to go, then I was going to go. The fear really didn’t set in. I was miserable. I felt horrible. I was having trouble breathing, my body was cramping up.”

But Bruns rallied. Nine days later, the IV’s were removed, his blood count returned to normal and the infection that spread through his mouth and throat had healed.

SUMMER VACATION

Bruns hangs up his phone and smiles. His eyes are glossy, his character mustache bends as his smile widens and his cheeks inflate. In his mind, he’s already in Alaska. He has just finished booking arrangements for his summer vacation and the chief information officer at Charleston Southern University couldn’t be happier. It’s been on his “to do” list for a while.

It’s been 15 years and change since he was told, “you’re gonna die,” but it’s never far from his mind. If he forgets, his body reminds him.

At one point Bruns was swallowing 24 pills a day, mostly to control pain. “It’s a balancing act to be functional and the medication making you tired,” said Bruns, who admits he still takes 16 pills a day.

“One of the drugs I took – Vinchristine – it’s job was to kill nerve cells,” Bruns remembers. “Chemotherapy drugs were made to kill cells, good cells, bad cells, didn’t matter, it killed cells. Both my arms, my hands were completely numb … and from my knee down, completely numb. Usually after chemo those cells regenerate, mine did not. So when I retired out of the military the V.A. assigned to me a disability of 90%. That’s because of the nerve damage.”

In a pure, honest and seemingly twisted way, you get the sense Bruns is enjoying the memories. Or, maybe it’s just the fact that he’s in fact, here to tell them, that keeps him smiling. Either way, talk of his illness kicks off a verbal assembly line of experiences and stories from before, during and after.

“I was in a wheelchair for four weeks until they could find a drug that deadened the pain I was in,” he says. “The pain in my feet … you take a step it was like, what it would feel like to have 50 needles going through your foot. So when I walked I had to walk on the sides of my feet, the outside of my feet, which looked stupid but it was the only way I could tolerate the pain.”

Bruns’ treatment started with 40 consecutive days of chemotherapy. “Chemo has three phases to it,” added Bruns. “I started chemo in February of ’91 and the chemo was completed in July of ’95.

During the life of his treatment, Bruns has had 38 spinal taps. “They messed up on five,” he continues. “When I say they messed it up, I mean they hit my sciatic nerve trying to get in there. That’s an incredible amount of pain. I can’t even describe it … it feels like they just ripped your leg off. That’s a massive amount of pain. Those are the biggies.”

ANGELA’S STORY

In times of need, most people will turn to the wise, the experienced, to get perspective, hoping they will ease their desperation with words of hope and encouragement. For Bruns it was Angela, a 13-year old Leukemia patient, who spoke to his heart while attending his first cancer group.

“She knew she was going to die,” Bruns remembers, the smile now gone. “They already told her they had done everything they could and they just can’t keep things going. So she told her mom, ‘I think I’m gonna stop taking math.’ She was in grade school and she told her mom she was going to stop taking math now because she didn’t think it was going to be very important to have a math background in Heaven.”

Bruns thought about Angela’s decision for a long time. It floored him. He had a new perspective.

“Here’s a little girl who’s 13-years old, who’s not really experienced anything in her life, she was diagnosed with Leukemia five years before … so here’s a little girl, with all she’s been through and her big decision at the end of her life was to not take math.”

Angela passed away four weeks later, a victim of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL), the same illness Bruns was diagnosed with.

In December, the cancer group added three new members: Mark (18), Mike (21) and Jim (30), all were diagnosed with Leukemia. Jim sailed through his treatment but later relapsed and died after a bone marrow transplant.

Bruns watched Mark, the youngest of the three men, struggle with his illness. “He had a really rough time, he kept telling me he was tired and no one listened to him until he passed out,” remembers Bruns. “He fell and hit his head and it ruptured blood vessels behind his iris. For about eight months he could only see peripherally. That’s when they ran some tests and found out he had Leukemia.”

Mark died within two years of his diagnosis.

At age 21, Mike didn’t fair much better, according to Bruns. “He had a vein infected in his arm, they had to remove the vein,” he said. “They did a crash-cart on him twice. He died twice … and he’s still alive.”

The remarkable part of the story is in the numbers. Over his four-and-a-half years of chemotherapy and regular cancer group meetings from Hawaii to South Carolina, Bruns became acquainted with 19 people battling A.L.L. Today, only three are still alive, including Bruns.

He is part of a small group of survivors, something Bruns doesn’t take for granted. “It makes you realize what you’re going through is nothing compared to what some of these people are going through … advanced breast cancer, what women have to go through is unbelievable, cervical cancer too …”

ATTITUDE

Bruns has learned to live – and laugh – about his illness.

In 1992, Bruns was transferred to Charleston and continued his chemotherapy treatments at Eisenhower Medical Center at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia.

“When I got to Charleston my wife ran a pre-school,” he said. “I was helping her out by doing all her maintenance for the building. I went over there when I was in the middle of going bald – I went bald eight times. Being bald and going bald because you are ill are two completely different looks … and four-year olds are incredibly honest.”

Child: What’s wrong with your head?

Rusty: I just had to take some medicine.

“This is not a two-minute conversation, this is a half-hour, 45-minute conversation, because then you have other four-year olds saying, ‘what did you say about your head?’”

And, let the games begin …

Bruns is again picking up momentum. His illness is now comedic in some ways.

“I woke up one morning and my entire body was covered in acne. I thought, ‘Hey look, just like Job,’” he says smiling. “It was a reaction from the chemo. You go to bed looking normal and you wake up, and your face looks like it has boils on it. It’s not very attractive, especially for a 29-year old. Any arrogance going in, it disappeared pretty quick.

“The first time I went bald, I was in the hospital at Tripler and I was in the shower. It was one of those showers with the hand-held shower head … So I am showering, I rinse off and I turn around and the whole back of the shower is hair, because the water pressure just blew it all off.”

“I think one of the keys to longevity if you’ve been sick is attitude,” he said. “I know so many people who got angry and mean about it and it didn’t help them at all.

“There’s a lot of hate. Why me? Why not somebody else? If you watch the people who have so much hate and anger that go through this, it was not only unpleasant for them, it was unpleasant for all the people trying to help them. When someone is told, ‘you have a pretty good chance of dying,’ it’s difficult to be mean to them, so those attitudes were allowed. It was unfortunate.”

RE-CONNECTING WITH GOD

Bruns’ illness signifies a marking post for his faith. “My faith was not very strong when I was diagnosed,” Bruns admitted, “but from the onset, my walk became much closer. I had just re-established a relationship that I had lost for a while. You look at people who are in trouble, who is the first person they reach out to? God. They pray.”

“I do think faith and praying and your relationship with Christ is very important in this process however using the thing between your ears to help you, to motivate you and help you feel better and make other people around you feel better is important.”

Bruns, who serves as a counselor for the veteran’s administration for other cancer patients, believes there is a clear line between attitude and faith. “I was speaking to a Leukemia patient and his attitude was blind faith,” Bruns said. “He said, ‘I’m gonna put it all in God’s hands and he’s either gonna fix me or take me.

“I said to him ‘you’re gonna die,’ which upset him a bit, but he needed to hear … God gave you a brain, God gave you intelligence, a will to fight. He’s already given you all the tools you need. If you’re just going to give it up to Him, why should he fix you when you have all the tools to fix yourself?”

Using both his index fingers, Bruns points to his temple, gesturing to his brain. “Faith is very important but the thing between your ears is just as important. Not that I think you can actually heal yourself but your attitude and your outlook are major factors. God gave you the tools to deal with this, if you give it all up to Him you’re not going to last very long.”

Two weeks later the man died.

“The difference between me and the guy who gave everything to God is, having a close relationship with Christ while you’re going through something like that – or everyday – helps you strength-wise to make it another day,” he said. “I asked God and Christ for strength, I asked for help to make the right decisions and to maintain an attitude that was not counter-productive to the healing process. I would say that they came through.”

NO TOMORROWS

There’s no DeLorean in Bruns’ driveway today but there is a huge, framed picture of one hanging above his desk in his home office.

Now 44, Bruns, sight-on-seen, appears healthy. “If no one knows there is something wrong with me, they would never know something was wrong with me and that’s the way I want it to be,” he says. Bruns has been cancer-free since April 1991. No relapse, not one.

“I’ve changed,” said Bruns. “My wife gets irritated with me sometimes because I kind of live everyday like it’s my last. I get home, if there’s something I want to do, I go do it because I might not wake up tomorrow.”

(as published in CSU Magazine)