Commentary: Kadena Airman aids wingman from across the globe

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Ryan Keeney
  • F-15 Eagle pilot
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan --  Editor's note: The first thoughts of being a wingman are typically helping to mow grass for deployed friends or babysitting their kids in a last minute emergency, despite previous plans. However, for one Airman, the dedication from a wingman at Kadena could mean the difference between life and death. Here is his story ...

I spent most of November 2010 toiling away in the salt mines in Washington, thinking about how soon I could get back to flying. I'd been feeling under the weather for most of the month, but, like any good fighter pilot, I have a deep-seated distrust of doctors and their power to take you off of flight status.

However, the morning before Thanksgiving, I woke up with blurry patches in my vision and rushed to the emergency room.

Within a couple of hours, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), an acute form of leukemia where your bone marrow produces immature cells rather than the red and white blood cells and platelets that it's supposed to.

I had been feeling bad for the past month because my red blood cells were less than half the critical level, and my eyes were blurry because there were so many immature blood cells that my blood vessels in my retinas started bleeding.

Message to all - I wouldn't advise the "avoid the flight doc at all costs" mentality.
Anyway, within the next 24 hours, doctors admitted me to the hospital, gave me three units of blood, put a central line near my heart, and started chemotherapy. For the next month, I was in the hospital getting and recovering from chemotherapy.

I returned home two days before Christmas with the leukemia in remission.

Even though the leukemia was in remission, doctors wanted to make sure it is really gone. So, over the next four months, I would go into the hospital for a week where doctors would administer a high dose of chemotherapy to track down any remaining cancer cells - kind of like "Whack-a-Mole" - then send me home.

I'd feel fine for a week, and I would feel wiped out for the next ten days. Then right when I was feeling normal again, we would start another round. This all lasted until about June 2011 when they pronounced me in continuing remission.

Life started to get back to normal, and I began anew trying to figure out how I could get back to flying. My flight doctor was great and pushed me through the Medical Evaluation Board and flight waiver process. In January 2012, I found out I was going to Columbus Air Force Base, Miss., to be the squadron commander of the Introduction to Flight Fundamentals Squadron (49th Fighter Training Squadron Black Knights).

After four months at the instructor pilot course at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, I drove back to Washington to pack out, sign out and say a teary goodbye to the Pentagon.
However, before I could do anything, I had to stop in at Bethesda Military Hospital for one last checkup and to say goodbye to my oncologist.

He was medically clearing me when he checked my lab results and discovered my leukemia had come back. To say the least, it was a gut punch. The packers were showing up the next morning; we were driving out that weekend - my change of command was the next week! We had to cancel everything and figure out what was next.

What was next for the cancer treatment was to get a stem cell transplant, also known as a bone marrow transplant. Three days later, the military sent me to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, which is one of the best hospitals in the country for this type of procedure.

So now we've settled into Houston for the long haul - at least six months, but probably longer. I've gone through another round of chemotherapy and am waiting to see if they were able to put the leukemia back into remission. As that's working, they are searching for a stem cell donor that matches me genetically.

Ironically, they found one perfect match, but, after further digging, they found out it was a sample I gave during a bone marrow drive at the U.S. Air Force Academy more than 15 years ago.

So the search goes on. Sadly, it's not just me; each year almost 15,000 people need a stem cell transplant and are searching for a match.

What's next for me in the Air Force, I'm not sure yet. Hopefully I can give the leukemia another beat down and then figure out what's available afterward. But I do know that I've got a lot of great wingmen helping my family through this fight, and for that I'm thankful.


Starting Sept. 5 and running through Sept. 9, Kadena Air Base will be hosting its first bone marrow donor registration drive in honor of Keeney. The goal is to register as many potential bone marrow donors as possible in the hopes of finding a compatible donor for Keeney and all our military members who are awaiting that perfect match.

For additional information on what registering to be a donor involves, check out the Department of Defense marrow donor website at www.dodmarrow.org.