Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 14, 1994                   TAG: 9405160003
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By KRISTEN KAMMERER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Long

`I HAD TO OVERCOME SO MANY OBSTACLES'

For some students, graduation will seem like a miracle. Especially to Virginia Tech student Robert Hope.

To graduate this year with a bachelor's of science in finance, Hope, 22, known to most everyone as "Robbie," not only had to pass his courses, he also had to defeat the leukemia he had been diagnosed with on Christmas Eve 1991.

At this same time last year, Hope received a life-saving bone marrow transplant.

Today, he completes his undergraduate career in good health.

"I feel very fortunate," Hope said. "For me, graduation will mean much more than just graduation. I had to overcome so many obstacles during the last five years to get here. It's unbelievable. I am very, very happy."

Hope, sweaty and red-faced after a hard game of basketball, and wearing a tweed cap backward on his head, shows few signs of the struggles he's faced in the last few years.

The struggle began immediately after his diagnosis with the search for a suitable marrow donor. After testing both of his siblings and researching the National Marrow Donor Program Registry, which listed 500,000 possible donors, no match was found.

Dismayed by the news, Hope's fraternity, Phi Kappa Sigma, created the "Robbie Hope Wellness Fund," which raised $15,000 and held several bone marrow drives in which volunteers were tested free of charge on campus.

In addition, friends and family in Hope's hometown of Herndon established "Hope for Hope," which raised funds to hold three community marrow drives in 1992.

In February 1993, Hope and his parents were informed that a donor had been found.

What followed, as Hope described it, was hell.

The transplant took place at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Wash. Despite a 50 percent chance for survival, Hope went into the procedure with confidence. "I was in good physical shape because I had been lifting [weights] every day to get ready, but I knew that the challenge would be more of a mental one," he said. "I tried very hard not to get down."

The first stage of the treatment was total body radiation, which destroys the cancerous white blood cells in both the blood and marrow. The procedure effectively wipes out a patient's immune system and prepares his or her body to receive the healthy marrow cells. Because of the resulting susceptibility to infection, Hope was placed inside a plastic bubble where he remained for one month.

"It was hard to go so long without human contact," Hope said. "I couldn't even talk to anyone for about a week because I was throwing up all the time. They give you a psychiatrist to talk to because a lot of people crack up, they try to break out of the bubble and stuff. But my reaction was to close down. It wasn't until the last two nights that I came close to ripping open the bubble."

The second stage of the procedure was the actual marrow transplant. Hope received the donor's cells in a large vein near the heart via an intravenous drip that lasted five hours. He then began a regimen of 36 drugs a day to prevent infection and rejection of the transplant.

Hope suffered side effects from the drugs and radiation. He couldn't eat for three weeks, lost all of his facial, head and body hair, and, as a result of the steroids he was taking, had a swollen face for several weeks. "It was really hard on my folks," he said.

Hope's family was with him during the treatment, and his mother and brother temporarily moved to Seattle to remain with him through the recovery period. They kept in close contact with Hope's father, who had to return to Virginia, using an 800 telephone number he had established for the family.

"None of us really knew what to expect," Hope said. "It was scary because there were people all around us going through the same thing I was, and they were dying."

For reasons he does not know, Hope was one of the lucky ones.

Upon returning to Virginia, Hope was advised to stay home for one year. However, he decided that he knew his body better than the doctors, and began taking classes at George Mason University near his home. Then, after taking a ski trip with his family, he returned to Virginia Tech last January, only seven months after the operation, and began taking 15 hours of classes.

"I had to take certain precautions, of course," Hope said. "I couldn't party like I used to because I couldn't afford to let myself get run down. I also had to avoid alcohol, sun, swimming pools and drinking out of someone else's glass. I pretty much had to avoid germs.

While at Tech, Hope has had his blood tested weekly and was happy to watch his white blood cell count rise, a strong sign of recovery.

But he knows that he's not in the clear entirely. "Sometimes I get an awkward feeling when I'm tested," Hope said. "It feels like, now that I'm in the clear, its going to come back. It's weird. I couldn't go through that all again."

Sometimes, he feels guilty about making it through the transplant when others he met at the hospital, some of whom became good friends, died.

But Hope's guilt is tempered by a strong sense of responsibility toward those who still need help. "I've already been saved," he said, and then requested that this article contain information about future marrow drives on Tech's campus.

This year alone, two fraternities at Tech, Sigma Chi and Phi Kappa Sigma held marrow drives that added 1,496 donors to the National Marrow Donor Program Registry. According to John Perelli, a graduating senior who majored in finance and psychology, and who is a member of Sigma Chi, "Virginia Tech has been called "the most marrow-minded campus in the free world'" by the national donor program. Perelli also stressed that there would be another drive held on campus in the fall, probably in conjunction with homecoming, and encouraged people to volunteer for testing.

"I can't stress how important it is for people to be tested," Hope said. "You can save someone's life."

After graduation, Hope will return to Seattle for his first annual check-up. On June 5 he begins a full-time job as a research analyst for a management consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

"I'm really fired up about the job," he said. "I suppose I could have come out of the whole experience wanting to take it easy and just relax. But instead, I came out realizing that you have to work hard if you want to enjoy life. And I just want to enjoy life."