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"The doctors asked me if I wanted to try chemotherapy again or to be more aggressive. I decided to try the aggressive route," said Carpenter, who lives life with a gusto.
³There was no question about it: Bill has always gone full-steam ahead, and that's how he wanted to treat his cancer,² said his wife, Teresa.
Wasting no time, Carpenter began an experimental stem cell transplantation, which is based on the rationale that all blood cells and immune cells arise from the stem cells, which are present in the marrow. Stem cells circulate in the blood in very small numbers.
Carpenter took the drug Neuprogen to stimulate cell growth and draw them out of the marrow.
³That part wasn't fun. When your bones are producing extra stem cells they ache,² said Carpenter, who was administered the shots by his wife, an employee at the Jackson County Department of Public Health.
³After my cell count got up to 58 in August, I went to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center,² said Carpenter, who then began the extensive hemapheresis treatment.
Carpenter had four ports on his body for blood to go in and out. First, the blood was collected to skim off a population of cells that contain stem cells. Once these cells were collected, Carpenter received high doses of chemotherapy to kill off all of the lymphoma cells in the body.
Because the high chemotherapy doses are toxic, they kill healthy cells in the process. Once the chemotherapy is finished, the stem cells are put back into the body to help the bone marrow begin the process of producing new, healthy cells.
During the hemapheresis process, Carpenter was hooked up to machines for five hours, four days in a row.
³That part wasn't really that painful,² he said. ³But it made me feel tingly cold... you know when your feet go to sleep and then the feeling just starts to come back... that tingly feeling was how I felt all over.
³Until I got to Bowman Gray, I just thought I had had chemo before. But what I had before was nothing like the doses I had there they were pretty intense,² Carpenter recalled.
The worst part was the antibiotics afterwards.
³During the transplant, they take you almost to the point of death before they bring you back... it's kind of a fine line,² he said. ³You are just about killed; you have no strength.
³Then they gave me this drug called ŒShake and Bake.' Whoever named it, named it good. It wracked my body so bad I couldn't eat for seven days I was that sick.²
Carpenter, who lost 50 pounds during treatment, hovered on that precarious line between life and death for a month at Bowman Gray while the stem cells engrafted, or began to make new blood cells. For a transplant to succeed, the stem cells must produce all types of blood cells white blood cells, red bloods cells and platelets.
³Bill was very lucky because he didn't have to have a donor... his body was able to produce its own stem cells. Not everybody is able to do that,² said his wife.
Bill was lucky, too, because of the support he received from friends back home.
³That gave me so much encouragement,² said Carpenter, who recalled one special friend, Martha Queen.
³When Martha, who had beat cancer for years, found out I had cancer, she called me and said, ŒBill, just because you are diagnosed doesn't mean it is a death sentence.'
³Martha was so interested in the latest cancer technology, especially stem cell transplants. We would talk for hours up at her Uncle Carlin and Aunt Alice Cabe' house on East Fork.
³Alice would cook this big, home-cooked meal and invite Martha over, and Martha would call me over to join them. We'd sit around and eat and talk. Well, if you knew Martha, I guess you could say we sat around and argued.
³Martha was such an inspiration to me and to a lot of other people who had cancer. Her attitude influenced me a lot. She was such a fighter. It hit me hard when she died in July.²
This New Year Carpenter said he has ³a brighter outlook on life. I know my cancer can come back, and I know, like Martha's, it could kill me, but Lord, I sure am glad for each day that I have.²
Carpenter, whose daughter, Shea White, lives in Columbus, said he plans to ³really spoil my two grandkids.² As he gains his strength back, this outdoorsman is also planning a trip out West to hunt and fish.
³I feel really good now; I'm still a little weak. I used to be rock solid, and now I shake. My legs ache and my memory goes at times. I have no saliva and my tongue is so sensitive I can't eat black pepper.
³But those are all minor things. What matters is I am a survivor and so happy to be alive,² said Carpenter, who retired from Verizon Phone Co. after 33 years.
³I read some about stem cell transplants, but a lot of it was too deep for me. I can't explain to you exactly how the whole process works, but it seems to be working for me, and for that I thank God,² said Carpenter, who also gives thanks to the support of his fellow church members at East Fork Baptist.
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Carpenter