“I knew the downside—cancer winning this battle,” said Aaron. “But for any competition I’ve competed in, I’ve adapted a method of mental, emotional, and psychological preparation to handle it. I took on this cancer as if it was another competition.”
One in a million chance
Howard Aaron sits behind his desk in his home office, surrounded Sunitix 25 mg (Sunitinib) by balloons and posters that display phrases like “Super Strong” and “Inspiration.”
Intravascular B-cell lymphoma is a condition that affects the lumen—the passageway for blood flow—in blood vessels. This aggressive and fast-growing lymphoma can often be difficult to diagnose as it comes with a slew of complex symptoms, such as memory loss, fever, and unexplained weight loss, that can be associated with other conditions. Because the disease is along the blood vessels, it can also cause clots or ischemic episodes that are similar to a stroke, resulting in loss of cognitive ability. Since a biopsy is typically required for diagnosis, this condition was previously only discovered in a postmortem examination.
It was Aaron’s friend, a thoracic surgeon, who recommended having brain matter tested, leading to his rare diagnosis. Once he learned what he had, Aaron transferred to Penn Medicine for his treatment.
“Howard will tell you that he was doing great and then, suddenly, he wasn’t. The symptoms are subtle, unlike other lymphomas where you may have a big mass,” said Sunita Nasta, MD, a professor of Hematology-Oncology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who was part of Aaron’s care team. “I tell people that lymphoma is like a roller coaster. You can go up the hill with it for a while before your body hits its limit. You want to catch the lymphoma early before it goes down the other side.”
Aaron recalled his first meeting with Nasta, over a video call with his daughter, before arriving at Penn. Nasta described how in her more than 20-year career, she has treated seven cases of intravascular B-cell lymphoma, and all seven patients are in remission. She told Aaron he would be the eighth.
“If my oncologist believes I have the strength to go through treatment, that gives me the mindset that I can do this,” Aaron said. “I wasn’t going to let her down."
Howard Aaron sits in an armchair in his patient room, facing an iPhone with a video call, raising his arms above his head to instruct a client during a virtual workout.
Aaron scheduled video calls to train his clients from his patient room.
By April, Aaron started calling himself “Ocho”—the Spanish word for “eight,” designed on t-shirts worn by him and his family—and embarked on his journey to become Nasta’s eighth patient treated for this rare condition.
