Mark's Story: Stem Cell Patient Tells Everyone He Made the Right Choice For His Treatment

Mark Sims, 61, knew his diagnosis was serious when his nephrologist in Myrtle Beach told him, “This is not a Myrtle Beach thing.”

After six months of searching for an answer to why he was having difficulty walking, suffering severe foot pain, experiencing balance problems and diminished kidney function, Sims was told that his problems appeared to involve his kidney, and it was complex.

The statement wasn’t meant to disparage Sims’ local doctors in the Grand Strand area, but to emphasize that Sims needed the advanced, multidisciplinary care that only an academic medical center could provide.

His doctor recommended MUSC Health or Duke. Based on his positive experiences at MUSC Health, Sims, who lives in Surfside Beach, chose MUSC Health.

His doctor made the call. The date was Nov. 19, 2019. The next day, Sims was in the office of MUSC Health neurosurgeon Dr. Bruce Frankel.

“Dr. Frankel ran tests until 10 p.m. that night and did surgery the next day,” says Sims. “He dismantled my spine and removed a tumor from my spinal cord. Then he put it back together again.”

Sims, 61, says Dr. Frankel took out as much as he could without damaging his spinal cord during the 11-hour operation.

The diagnosis: clear cell carcinoma that had encapsulated his spinal cord. But that wasn’t all. Dr. Frankel also told him a bone marrow biopsy was needed to rule out the possibility of multiple myeloma.

Although he recovered quickly from his surgery, Sims had to relearn to walk. With the help of physical therapy and his can-do spirit, he progressed from a wheelchair to a walker, to crutches, and two canes before walking unassisted. The process took nearly a year.

Meanwhile, in January 2020, he was strong enough to begin radiation therapy to fight what remained of the tumor. Under the direction of radiation oncologist Dr. Charlotte Rivers at MUSC Health University Medical Center in Mount Pleasant, Sims went for treatments Monday-Friday for six weeks.

Once the radiation was completed, Sims had a bone marrow biopsy that showed he had multiple myeloma, a cancer that forms in the white blood cells.

His medical team recommended chemotherapy followed by an autograft stem cell transplant in which his own stem cells would be removed, treated, and infused into his body.

Sims underwent his chemotherapy treatments in Myrtle Beach under one condition: “I told my doctors I didn’t mind taking it elsewhere as long as MUSC was driving the ship.” His treatment was overseen by his MUSC Health hematologist oncologist, Dr. Hamza Hashmi.

By October 2020, he was ready to begin the process for a stem cell transplant.

The transplant would require the withdrawal of six million stem cells over three days. Each session would last five to six hours.

“I had a trifusion port installed in my chest that had three lines: one for chemo, one to draw blood and for IVs, and a third for the stem cell transplant,” Sims says. “I didn’t feel anything. The hardest part was being alone because this was during the pandemic, and Kesha couldn’t be there with me.”

Nearly a year after his diagnosis, on Oct. 22, 2020, Sims had his “second birthday,” the name given to a stem cell infusion, at the NCI-designated MUSC Hollings Cancer Center. “It is an amazing thing to watch,” he says. “The cells look like little granules of sand going into the body.”

After the transplant, Sims was required to stay within a 30-minute drive of the hospital for 43 days. Each day, he and Kesha drove from a nearby campground where they were living in their RV to the Hollings Cancer Center for Sims’ blood work, infusions, and visits with the bone marrow transplant physician assistants.

“Everyone at Hollings was wonderful and supportive,” he says. “We can’t say enough good things about Dr. Hashmi and the physician assistants.”

He returned home in early 2021. Eager to build on each daily improvement in his recovery, he worked diligently, doing home exercises and participating in physical therapy with Hollings physical therapist Dr. Katie Schmitt through in-person or virtual visits on his home computer.

To his and Kesha’s relief, Sims’ bone marrow biopsy didn’t show any sign of cancer. “I was getting on with my life,” he says. “I’d regained the 60 pounds I had lost. Everything was going great.”

Until one day, it wasn’t.

Three weeks later, in July 2022, another bone marrow biopsy told a different result: Sims had a blood cancer called myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS.

Dr. Hashmi referred him to MUSC Health oncologist Dr. Alexander Coltoff, who recommended a second stem cell transplant – this time from a donor.

Sims favored the transplant, called an allotransplant. The transplant team began the task of finding a donor whose bone marrow matched his. No one in Sims’ family qualified. A two-month search of the worldwide donor bank finally yielded a perfect match - a 27-year-old European female.

Logistics were complicated, and time was of the essence.

The donor had to be tested. When the test confirmed that she was a match, with the same blood type, the team had to coordinate the time she could donate with the hour of the transplant. Stem cells must be infused within 2 days after being harvested.

A week before the donation date, Sims went into the hospital for one more chemotherapy treatment.

The donor cells were harvested on Nov. 17, 2022, and arrived in Charleston around 11 p.m. At 10 a.m. the next morning, nearly three years to the day when he was diagnosed with the first cancer multiple. Sims received his stem cell allotransplant and celebrated his “third birthday” with the transplant team.

The next five weeks, at MUSC Health’s Ashley River Tower, were rough. Through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years he battled pneumonia, nausea, diarrhea, and loneliness.

“It was very, very hard being away from family, but the nurses on 7 West offered encouragement and moral support to Kesha and me night and day,” he says. “They are great; in fact, they don’t come any better.”

The day he left Ashley River Tower was bittersweet. “We’d been with the nurses day and night for five weeks, and they were like family to us. That’s a long time, and on days that it was hard they gave me a hug and reassured me that everything was going to be all right.”
After his release, he was required to remain nearby for three months. Once again, he and Kesha made daily visits to Hollings for his follow-up treatment.

Once again, he was treated like family by the physician assistants at Hollings. “We saw them every day, and they were always there keeping my spirits up,” Sims says. “The moral support they provided meant just as much as the care and treatment. In fact, it was treatment.”

On Feb. 14, 2023, Sims was well enough to go home. Two weeks later, he was bound to Daytona, Fla., for Biketoberfest.

“With all due respect for my doctors, being in the warm weather, out among people and around those motorcycles on that trip did as much for me as all the medicine in the world,” he says. “I went all week, and we had a great time.”

Four months later, Sims is still rolling. “I’m riding my motorcycles again, piddling around in my shop working on them, and working around the house and in the yard,” he says.

Sims credits Kesha, his faith, and the entire team at MUSC Health, including Drs. Coltoff, Frankel, Hashmi, the physician assistants, and his nurses, for getting him through his ordeal.

“Everybody at MUSC Health has been so good to me,” he says. “I can’t say enough good things about everybody, and I love them all.

They really did treat me like family, and when I was down, they encouraged me every step of the way. I trust them 100 percent and I wouldn’t go anywhere else. I know I chose the right place for my treatment."