Ten years ago, Gerald Cowden didn’t know Graft vs. Host Disease (GvHD) existed, but now the Cleveland lawyer heads a foundation dedicated to raising money for research into the disease.
Cowden rattles off key dates with precision as he tells of how his daughter, Meredith — then a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Cincinnati — was rushed to the emergency room (on May 19, 2001) and was later diagnosed with leukemia, a cancer of the bone marrow and lymphatic system.
On Sept. 12 of that year, Meredith received a bone marrow transplant from her sister and seemed to be recovering until the following Easter, when her skin suddenly turned red, looking like a “horrible sunburn,” Cowden said.
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Shortly after that, Meredith was diagnosed with GvHD, a common complication of bone marrow transplants that happens when immune cells in the transplanted material recognize the recipient’s body as foreign and attack it.
That led Cowden, an attorney with Cowden & Humphrey Co. LPA, three years ago to start the Meredith A. Cowden Foundation to raise money for research into GvHD and other cancers of the blood. Primarily through golf events, the foundation has raised about $90,000 for research, most of which has gone to Dr. Kenneth Cooke, director of the pediatric blood and marrow transplantation program at University Hospital’s Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.
“He’s a big deal, and we’re lucky to have him in Cleveland,” Cowden said of Cooke.
Rates of GvHD among transplant patients vary, from around 35 percent when the donor is related to the patient, to as high as 80 percent when there’s no relationship. Serious cases can result in death, and there is no cure.
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As part of its mission for raising awareness, the Cowden Foundation is sponsoring next month in Cleveland what it calls “the first national education conference” on GvHD. Physicians and researchers from University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic, the University of Minnesota and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle are scheduled to present.
“The symposium will bring together researchers and treatment specialists from the nation’s top medical and educational institutions,” Cowden said. “It will provide survivors and their families with unprecedented access to the nation’s best GvHD medical experts in one place.”
As for Meredith, Cowden says the now 29-year-old is doing well, living in Northeast Ohio and about to finish her master’s in art therapy and counseling at Ursuline College. She has to see the doctor only a few times each year.
“If she walked into the room and said ‘hello,’ you wouldn’t know she’d been through any of this,” he said.
