On June 11th, Vivian Campbell had a chat with SiriusXM's Eddie Trunk regarding Def Leppard's recent activities, their journey to get to this point, as well as Campbell's own personal life and his health.
Campbell has had a well-documented, and long, battle with cancer.
He was first diagnosed in 2013 with Hodgkin's lymphoma, cancer of the white blood cells, which can be quite aggressive, but also very treatable. Campbell explained to Trunk that despite the fact that his lymphoma had been caught and diagnosed early, it was difficult to get people to pay attention in the beginning.
"So many people, unfortunately, don't get diagnosed until they're stage four or something. I was very, very fortunate that I knew something was going on with me and I kept at my doctors. I said, 'Look, something's going on here. You gotta give me an X-ray. You've gotta give me a CAT scan. You've gotta figure this out.' And when they eventually did, about a year and a half after I'd begun to pester them…. It was a solid 18 months before they actually put me in touch with the right people and I got my diagnosis. So I was fortunate that I caught it early. And I do strongly advocate for people to be advocates for their own health," Campbell described (transcribed via Blabbermouth).
And once Campbell had been diagnosed, over the course of 13 years, he underwent three rounds of chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant and spinal surgery before he was declared cancer-free, "[I went] through the mill with all sorts of chemo and immunotherapy and combination therapies, and 10 years ago I did an autologous stem cell transplant, which means using my own stem cells. That didn't work. The cancer kept coming back…. [But] I did a PET scan in the middle of April and I'm a hundred percent clean, completely in remission for the first time in 12 or 13 years. And I am obviously overjoyed. You couldn't ask for more than that."
The cure came from outside of his body despite his doctors' best efforts to keep it internal – "it's absolutely amazing what they can do."
The doctors ended up telling Campbell that his "only chance of a cure was to do a donor transplant. And that's exactly what I did. Starting last summer, during our tour, I started doing more chemo in preparation for it. And then right after the tour, they started giving me very hardcore chemo leading up to the transplant. I was supposed to start after Thanksgiving, and I lost my donor 10 days beforehand. So that was a kick in the nuts. But I was very fortunate that they found me another one in December. And on New Year's Eve, I went into hospital."
Campbell elaborated how difficult it is to find a donor in the first place because not only does a donor need to match 10 genetic markers to a certain degree, but they also must undergo a course of medications in preparation for their own invasive surgery.
Familial donors often will donate actual bone marrow, according to Campbell, but for strangers, doctors will often "use enriched stem cell blood." And to have enriched stem cell blood, a medication is taken that "generates your stem cell growth in the bone marrow itself. And it causes a lot of discomfort and bone pain."
Campbell explained that's all he really knows about his donor, besides his age: "I don't get to know who he is for a couple years, but a 21-year-old man," who matched the genetic markers with a "10 out of 10." The complete stranger donated his bone marrow, and now Def Leppard's Vivian Campbell is cancer free.
If you're looking for a sign to help others, check out how you can sign up to be a living donor here.
