MORGANTOWN — If something in your body doesn’t feel right, go to the doctor.
That’s the message Demetry Walker, 23, wants to spread after being diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia, which, if it goes into remission, will still require lifelong treatment with an oral chemotherapy drug.
Five months ago, Walker started getting the night sweats almost every night. For the last four months he’s felt weak, tired, and lethargic — sometimes too weak to eat or go to the bathroom.
“I just thought it was depression, or maybe burnout from nursing school,” Walker shared on his Facebook page.
In the two weeks leading up to his diagnosis, he woke up every night to vomit stomach acid. On May 21, his clinical instructor sent him home and made him schedule a same-day appointment. That night he was in the emergency department, where doctors told him based on his bloodwork results he had cancer, probably leukemia. Three days later he was in the hospital with an official diagnosis.
“I understand it could have been caught sooner, but I just decided to take the personal responsibility that I should not have had to diagnose myself incorrectly,” Walker said. “My goal right now besides me being treated and getting better, I really want to focus and push into the community, if something feels off go to the doctor. It’s really that simple. I know people have fears. I know people have doubts, but I’m telling you your life could be better if you just get it done sooner. And not everyone has leukemia or some strange rare disorder, but some people do have these dormant diseases that just grow and then pop up crazy like wildfire.”
Walker is in the accelerated phase of the disease, which is less difficult to treat than blast phase or blast crisis. If treatment goes well, Walker could phase into basic chronic leukemia or even remission. The phase of the cancer is determined by the percentage of “blast cells” in a patient’s blood, Walker said.
If his current count stays as it is, he could be home as early as next week, his mother, Delegate Danielle Walker, D-Monongalia, said.
However, he won’t be able to work or go to school for at least two months, she said. As her son’s caretaker, the hours she is able to work have been reduced since he can’t drive and will need to regularly visit a cancer outpatient center.
Thankfully, she said, the community has stepped up.
In just three days, more than $33,000 has been raised for the Walkers through a GoFundMe started by Demetry’s friends, Aishwarya Vijay and Megan Loy.
“Right from the start, anyone who meets him will recognize the jovial attitude and positive aura that surrounds him. He is quite literally everybody’s biggest cheerleader. He lights up a room when he walks in and can make anybody and everybody smile,” the GoFundMe states.
“I am beyond shocked,” Walker said of the community response to his condition.
The Walkers are originally from Louisiana but for the last 11 years have called the Morgantown area their home. Walker said people he went to high school with, people he met just once in a class at WVU, and his current peers and instructors at Monongalia County Technical Education Center have all rallied around him and sent him love.
“I feel the support and I feel the love of the Mountaineer Nation,” he said.
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