"My name is Frank Gibbes and I am a seven-year survivor of CML (Chronic Myloid) leukemia.  I was diagnosed on June 5, 1997 – it was the day that changed my life.  It was in my doctor’s office.  My doctor had sat me down and said, “Well, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news.  The blood counts look OK except for this one thing.    Well, your white cell count is a little high.”  He told me that my white cell count was 350,000.  Then he told me that normally the white blood count would be about 15,000.   I realized that I was in some kind of trouble.  I still didn’t really understand it until he told me. “I’ve taken the liberty of calling your father and he is on his way over here.”    I knew as soon as he told me that he had called my dad I knew that I was in some trouble.  I went from the doctor’s office to the hospital and spent three days there undergoing various tests, taking a lot of medicine.  After three days they let me out, which began a whirlwind of research, and traveling and information gathering to determine where the best place to have a bone marrow transplant was.   Eventually we settled on Columbia , SC and in October of ’97, I went to Columbia SC and began my treatment.  Three days of high-dose total-body radiation and five days of high dose chemotherapy by the end of which I was completely worn out and could barely stand.   It was only after that they gave me the bone marrow transplant transfusion.   As opposed to transplanting a heart or another organ, it’s really just basically a bag of blood.  It takes about two and a half minutes for it to run into your body and you just wait and hope that it grows.  In my case, it tried to grow for about a year and a half and then it was ultimately determined that my bone marrow transplant had failed. We started to look at more less likely options for some type of cure -  one option was a second bone marrow transplant but the odds were so bad on surviving a second bone marrow transplant that we decided to look elsewhere.  We chose this clinical study, a clinical trail, that involved taking more blood out of my brother, manipulating it genetically, then putting it back in me in the hopes it would allow the bone marrow that my brother had given me to grow the way it was supposed to.  I went through four treatments where I would to down to the treatment center in Columbia   - they  would infuse me with the genetically changed cells, then I would go home, and they would just keep tabs on me.   About that time, a little known study was taking place on a drug that was known as Gleevec.  It was actually called STI-571 at the time. We heard about it because my doctor, my oncologist, had seen a little blip off of an Internet site that he frequented regarding oncological things, I guess, and  wanted us to look into it.  It just so happened the study was taking place at the University of Texas Medical Center - the MD Anderson Cancer Center.   We called, found out that I could get on the trial.  I got down there immediately to receive my treatment - my STI-571, which was just a pill, and be monitored by the doctors there.   The end result was miraculous.  The doctors found that pretty much everybody they gave the drug to… virtually cured everyone.  It wasn’t true with everybody, but it was true for a lot, and it was true for me.   I went in the first three months of being on the drug from having an 87% leukemia count to a 12 % leukemia count, and it just went down from there.   Eventually, I graduated from law school and returned to South Carolina .  Shortly thereafter, my wife and I, living in Greenville , received an invitation to an American Cancer Society gala over in Spartanburg .  So we went to the Gala, and so we sat down at a table in the back and were surrounded by American Cancer Society volunteers. They asked about my situation, about the fact I had leukemia, and then someone spoke up and said, “Well, have you heard about this new drug, this STI-571?   – it’s a miracle drug!”   We looked at them and smiled and I said, “Why, yes I’ve been on it for six months now.”   From that point on, I’ve been involved with the American Cancer Society.  I’ve been involved as a volunteer, and been involved as a spokesperson, but the wonderful part about it is, that without the American Cancer Society, I would have never had that chance.  As it turned out, STI-571 was originally developed with a grant from the American Cancer Society.  Without that money, the drug that saved my life would not have been developed.”