Jasmine Cherry: It’s a Marathon, Not a Race

Jasmine Cherry is one of our Moffitt team members.  After seeing her grandparents both treated at Moffitt, she was excited to get her dream job at age 24 working in the cell therapy lab.  Little did she know that just one year later, she would be diagnosed with leukemia and need those very same cell therapies to survive. She shares with us how her experience has deepened her connection and commitment to excellence in her work.

Thank you to our Storyteller:  Jasmine Cherry

To our Narrator/Host: Loreen O’Brien

And to our Production Team: Kathi Barden (podcast project leader), Anne Bidelman, Donna DiClementi, Robin Gordon (Patient Advisor), Randy Isaacson (Family Advisor), Loreen O’Brien, Terry Payton, and Cristina Perez

Podcast Transcript

Hi, my name is Jasmine Cherry. I work in the cell therapy facility here at Moffitt. I've worked here for about three years now. I work in the manufacturing team, so we work on all of the phase two clinical trials here. So experimental cell therapy, um, things like Car-T cells, TIL, which is like tumor infiltrating lymphocyte therapy. So anything that's like cutting edge or isn't quite standard of care yet I get to work on with my team. Like, I wake up every morning and I just love coming to work. So Moffitt has always been a dream job for me. My grandparents actually both got treated here when I was in middle school and high school, so when I went to school, the end goal was to work here at Moffitt. I was 24 when I started working here. Everything was great. It's my dream job. I'm just super happy just to be here. Couldn't believe I landed this as my first actual real job.

Um, and then I would say probably about a year into working here, I started feeling not that well. It was really, like ambiguous symptoms, kind of like flu symptoms and bone pain. And I have, a history of rheumatoid arthritis in my family. So I originally thought that I would just go get a workup for, like, rheumatoid because I was having bone pain was really strange. But then one morning I woke up and I had really intense chest pain. Um, because of that, for me, I was like, okay, I have to go to the E.R., so I actually, like, drove myself. I didn't tell my parents or anything. I just went to the E.R., I texted my supervisor and I told her, hey, I'm going to be late today.

Originally they were saying, well, maybe it's a pulmonary embolism, which was really scary. So I was like, oh my gosh. But then once they got the bloodwork back, um, we just knew what it was. Right away we could see that my hemoglobin was really low. My white blood count was really elevated, which are like classic indicators of that something is wrong. And just from working where I work, I saw those numbers and I, I just had a really strong feeling of what it was.

The first day they said, we're going to refer you to oncology. And when I heard that word, my heart just stopped. And, um, I was really hopeful they were telling me, well, maybe it could be viral because sometimes viruses, they can mimic symptoms like, let's hope it's a virus. So I got the viral workup. Um, and then I had a couple blood transfusions, like, overnight, just because of my hemoglobin was so low, it was really scary. And, um, the next morning, I actually got a phone call from the oncologist, and she was confirming that just from the preliminary test that it is cancer. It's leukemia. Um, I was just really scared. As soon as they found out where I worked, they were like, well, do you want to go to Moffitt? And I said, yes, absolutely. I want to go to Moffitt because I knew it would be like my best chance of success.

So, um, within 24 hours, um, they put me in an ambulance and transferred me here to Moffitt. It was just like night and day from, like, the night that I arrived. The first thing they asked me is what my goal was. It just meant that they saw me as a person and not just like a patient number, like an MRI. And they wanted to know what I wanted out of it. And for me, it was just clear communication, like I wanted to know, what are you giving me in this cup of pills? Like, what is this? What is it for? And you know this, they're hanging a bag up. Like, what is that? Oh, it's an antifungal. It's going to help treat you for, you know, you're immunocompromised right now. We don't want you to get any infection. And they really took that's it was on the whiteboard and they wrote “she wants clear communication. She wants to know what's going on.” I really felt that from the rotating nurses and the rotating attending physicians, they all gave me that same treatment, which I really appreciated. And at the last hospital I was at where I was first treated, it was very, um, you know, I got diagnosed on a phone call. It was not even personable. I didn't know what was going on. And, um, just like from the moment that I was just getting my intake information from the nurse, I knew that I made a good decision.

So I also I had to get a bone marrow biopsy to kind of confirm actually, like what it was. But I met my oncologist. But then like the next morning, doctor I or doctor Isenalumhe. Her name was really hard to pronounce. So I just called her doctor. I, um, and she was super cool. She took a blank piece of paper. She, like, sketched out, you know, okay, it's leukemia. We're not sure what type. Here are the different types here. The treatment plans for this. That meant a lot to me, to have her kind of sit next to me with a pen and draw out. Okay. And then when my parents came later, I was able to explain to them using her pictures. And it was just really, really nice because even though I understand the high level of it, it was nice for her to like keep it simple, because during that time I wasn't able to think of it like how I was thinking about it back in school, but she was like, we have to start chemo tomorrow because she said my prognosis was about one month if I didn't get any treatment. So she's like before the results even come back. We're just going to start chemo if you're okay with that. And I was like, I guess I have no choice. And she's like, you always have a choice.

Yeah, because I'm a scientist, I. I think it's important for me to have that for my peace of mind. Because, you know, chemo isn't just chemo to me. I want to know what type of chemo am I getting? So it's just really, you know, for me, I was kind of nerding out too, on myself, which is kind of weird because I was like, oh, that's cool. Like, I'm getting a tyrosine kinase inhibitor that's so super cool that I'm getting that because I know how that works.

So yeah. I originally had traditional chemo. Um, that didn't quite work. So I was put on an immunotherapy for 4 or 5 months. It was like a backpack that was like a 24 seven infusion. That one put a Band-Aid on it. It was I was able to hit clinical remission, they call it. So it's not quite like a full remission. But I had minimal residual disease, meaning that I was sort of in remission. But I had mutations underlying mutations that weren't quite going away. So, um, due to that poor prognosis and the mutations that I had, I had to proceed with some sort of cell therapy, which was really ironic because that's where I work.

So, um, I chose to do the bone marrow transplant or BMT, that's the acronym we tend to use for bone marrow transplant. I was that one of my follow up appointments, just sitting in the waiting room and there was a woman. She kept looking at me. I kind of was looking at her. And then, um, she kind of just ended up coming towards me and sitting next to me. And she was like, where? Where are you in the process? And I was like, oh, um, I'm about like two weeks out. And she's like, okay, it's my first time here. How does it feel like, how does the transplant feel? And I was like, well, if I'm going to be honest, it sucks. But it's a lot of pain for a lot of gain. So I'm like, I'm really glad I did it. It's not easy, but if you have a good support system, it'll be really good for you. And we just had a long conversation. We were just talking, and she actually had the same diagnosis as me, which was really crazy. So, I kind of she had the same treatment as me, like she had the chemo, she had the immunotherapy that didn't work, and now she's doing a transplant. And I just remember talking to her and after we're done talking, she was just like, I'm so glad that I talked to you. And we were just. And I was like, I'm so glad I talked to you. And it's just really ironic because I couldn't believe that so early in my journey, I was able to impact someone, help someone, because I felt at that time I was just super vulnerable and not really feeling good and needing help from someone else. Maybe. But at that time I was able to help somebody else, which was really cool. I think that Moffitt really creates like a safe space for us patients to really open up with each other and talk about it, because it's kind of hard to talk to someone that hasn't been through it. And I was like, fresh in it. So it was really cool to see that I could talk to someone and help them through that.

 When I started working at Moffitt, I knew sort of knew it, like I knew that I had a coworker -they made it really vague - that was diagnosed with cancer, that got like a cell therapy. And I'm like, okay, that's interesting. When I found out it was Alex, I was just floored because I would have had no idea. Like he just lives such an active life.

This is kind of like a side story. I remember when I got on the ambulance to get wheeled in here, you know, you're laying on the ambulance and he actually got the Award of Excellence. So as I was being wheeled into Moffitt, I saw a picture of him on the wall. I was just like, oh, look, there's Alex, because they have the plaque of him. But, um, Alex has honestly like when I, when I was beginning my treatment, I would look at him and I would think, okay, that could be me in five years, because he was really close to his five years remission. And it was just really cool to see that he took that risk five years before me. And now he's living a full life like a beautiful life.

For BMT or bone marrow transplant, I really had to rely on my family to be a match -so my parents, and I have an older sister and a younger brother. They all donated, so my little brother was a match. It really bonded us together and it's really cool because now we're like twins. Our taste buds are the same. I have his allergies now. My blood type changed. I used to be, oh, positive. And now I have the same blood type as him. It's really crazy. And if you do a DNA keryotype, which is like, it'll show you all your chromosomes. I now like have identical to him, which is really crazy. So we're like I call him my twin now because I used to love spicy food and I don't like spicy food anymore. It's too spicy. I used to love seafood. He hates seafood. I can not even eat shrimp anymore. It's really crazy.

I feel so connected in a way that when you hear, okay, the patient's getting lymphoid liver depleted. I know what that feels like. I think, oh my gosh, they're doing their radiation or they're doing their chemo. Like I know how that feels. And whenever I'm working on a harvest, we call it, which is like the very last day when we're getting those cells and turning it into a drug product for that patient. I feel like my attention to detail and making sure like this patient gets the cleanest, safest product really just means so much. Because I think about the family and I think about, you know, the patient's been anticipating this for weeks because the process is kind of long. They collected my brother's cells, but I didn't get them until I think a few weeks to a month after.

 So you know what's happening, but you're just waiting for that day zero, we call it. We're waiting to, like, receive our cells. So for me, I think. I just. Whenever I'm doing anything now, I'm very, very careful to make sure because it's a very, like critical product we're working with. You only have one shot. You get one piece of tumor, and that's what you get to turn it into a product for the patient. So there's really not much room for error. And you really want to make sure you're aseptic with your techniques so that you don't mess anything up. So it's really important to make sure that we are doing the best that we can do to give this patient their product, because usually for most people, cell therapy is like the last option.

You know, we've exhausted anything. Traditional chemo probably hasn't worked, immunotherapy probably hasn't worked. And this is like our last shot for hitting remission so that we can move on with our lives because your life was put on pause. So during that time, you're just kind of hoping for anything. And I feel like when I receive the cells on my day zero, that pause button, like I was able to press play again because I knew, I think I'm going to get better now. And as your counts go up and each month you get stronger, your hair starts to grow back. It's just really crazy because I think about it now from like a different perspective than they did before.

Apart from my family, the whole cell therapy facility as a whole like supported me through this from like the beginning up until the end. So, um, for a bone marrow transplant, the day that you get your cells, they call it your second birthday. So that's like your day zero of remission. So December 2nd, 2022 was like when I received my brother's cells. So I came back to work. And December 2nd of 2023.

My coworkers threw a surprise birthday party for me. It was super sweet. They decorated my desk. I had I had hot dogs. I love hot dogs. It's like a really like inside joke with us. So they. One of my coworkers woke up at 8:00 am to barbecue hot dogs in her backyard, and we had hot dogs and it was just really great. So we celebrated my second birthday that day. And then I had my actual birthday this past February, where I was able to celebrate another birthday thanks to Moffitt. I turned 27, so I'm really happy to see that.

If I could say anything, I would just say thank you so much and really just thank you. I don't really don't know what else to say, because without the options that I had here at Moffitt, without being able to be treated at Moffitt, I wouldn't be here right now. So I just really want to say thank you to all the hard days, the long days, and just I'm just so grateful.

And my family is grateful.

So I'm waiting for that five years. I just hit one year. So four more to go, but it's a marathon, not a race.

That's what Alex told me.

Music Credits

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https://uppbeat.io/t/brock-hewitt-stories-in-sound/washed
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https://uppbeat.io/t/iros-young/neverending-story
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