A North Carolina man received a terminal cancer diagnosis just before he was approved to donate one of his kidneys.
At age 50, Jeff Stewart had spent more than a decade trying to donate his organ to someone in need. It wasn’t for a family member or anyone he knew personally, but because “it seemed like the right thing to do.”
After countless tests, fasting and losing 75 pounds, the father of seven was finally approved as a donor in July 2022. But after a routine CT scan before officially joining the donor registry, Stewart was rejected once again.
This time it was because scans revealed a tumor that turned out to be stage four adenocarcinoma, a type of stomach cancer considered incurable.
The pharmaceutical consultant was surprised that he had not shown any symptoms and said: “It was very lucky that he was caught.”
TRAGIC: John, pictured with his youngest daughter, had no symptoms before his cancer diagnosis.
However, he was diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer after attempting to donate his kidney to a stranger in 2022.
Stewart, now 52, is no stranger to playing the odds. In 1994, he won the Jeopardy! College Championship, taking home more than $25,000. However, despite his past good fortune, he said The patient’s history: ‘I don’t expect to be cured.
‘I don’t expect to be cured of this. The numbers are what they are and that’s fine.
“I’m very grateful for the time I’ve had and being able to do things that I hope matter.”
Stomach cancer, which affects nearly 27,000 Americans and kills 10,000 each year, is usually diagnosed with an upper endoscopy, a procedure in which doctors insert a tube with a camera on the end down the throat and into the stomach.
However, when Mr. Stewart underwent an endoscopy a few weeks before his diagnosis as part of the kidney donation protocol, his results were clear.
Adenocarcinoma is a tumor that forms in the glandular tissue, which lines organs such as the stomach and releases mucus.
More than nine out of 10 stomach cancers are adenocarcinomas.
His doctors believe it didn’t show up on endoscopy because he had undergone gastric bypass surgery more than a decade earlier.
Mr Stewart, pictured with his wife Jen and their seven children.
Performed up to 300,000 times a year in the United States, gastric bypass surgery involves dividing the stomach and small intestine and connecting them in a “Y” shape.
This means that food bypasses the stomach and the first part of the small intestine, so the digestive system does not absorb all the calories, causing weight loss.
In Mr. Stewart’s case, there was “nothing to see” because the tumor was in the part of the stomach that was no longer functioning.
He said: ‘(The tumor) was in the part of my stomach that underwent bypass. I wouldn’t have symptoms. Even if it had gotten quite bad, it wouldn’t have gotten to the food, there wouldn’t have been a blockage there until it had actually gotten a lot more out of my stomach.’
It was confirmed that the cancer was caused by a mutation in Mr Stewart’s FGFR2 gene.
Normally, this gene helps produce proteins responsible for cell division, blood vessel formation, wound healing, and bone development.
However, a mutation can cause the protein to become overactive, which can lead to the development of cancer cells. Experts estimate that this mutation is responsible for one in 10 gastric cancers.
In localized cases, stomach cancer has a five-year survival rate of up to 75 percent, but this drops to just seven percent at stage four.
Doctors also found a tumor on one of Mr. Stewart’s kidneys, which was a separate form of cancer called renal cell carcinoma, not related to stomach cancer.
It is unclear if it was the kidney he planned to donate or at what stage it was discovered.
Mr Stewart quickly underwent surgery to remove both tumours, where doctors discovered the stomach cancer had spread deep within the stomach lining. Within weeks, he began several cycles of chemotherapy, followed by radiation.
He said: “I didn’t get the kind of chemotherapy that makes your hair fall out, but I did get the kind that destroys your nerves.”
Mr. Stewart is no stranger to playing the odds. In 1994, he won the Jeopardy! College Championship (pictured), taking home $25,000 and a new car
He has undergone several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, but the treatments are primarily intended to slow the cancer rather than cure it. Both treatments had a number of side effects.
The medications, particularly a chemotherapy drug called oxaliplatin, sent shock waves through his body every time he picked up something slightly cold like a carton of ice cream.
“I felt like I had been shot with a Taser,” he said.
After the first treatment, Mr. Stewart experienced a burning sensation in his arm that felt like it was on fire, but at the same time felt cold to the touch.
He said: “I had never felt anything like it and it stayed like that for days.”
The radiation also had side effects, including extreme fatigue.
“Your light gets dim because you just want to sleep,” he said.
For Mr. Stewart, chemotherapy and radiation are not meant to cure his cancer, but to help slow the disease and make him more comfortable. Even if doctors decide to offer him more experimental treatments, he estimates they will only give him a few more months.
He said: ‘(The treatment) has to kill every cancer cell, and if it doesn’t, I die. And it wasn’t like that, for me. I’m not depressed, but the years wear on me. It’s more difficult.
‘This makes very simple things more important. It can be stimulating. There is a certain joy in knowing that you have a canvas this size and not “I don’t know how big.” I can fill that canvas. I can do something with that.’
As part of his coping process, Mr. Stewart wrote a memoir (pictured) for his children with all his best advice “so they would have them after I’m gone.”
As part of his coping strategy, Stewart wrote a memoir, Live: inspiration from a parent with cancerto include “all my best advice for my kids so they have them after I’m gone.”
The book includes messages such as recognizing luck and good fortune and trying not to focus on things you can’t control. The goal is to help his children and his wife of more than 30 years, Jen, cope with his death in the long term.
He said: ‘I have seven children. I hope that the pain of my death, when it comes, is not too devastating for them and for my wife, my parents or my sisters.
‘I expect those parts. But I don’t expect a cure because there is nothing in the pipeline nearby.’
Of all the advice in the book, Stewart noted that the best is kindness.
He said: ‘Kindness is the only thing that matters. It’s nice to be smart, it’s nice to be rich, it’s nice to be strong, it’s nice to be brave.
“But if we’re not nice, nothing else matters.”