Cancer patient given second chance at life with new treatment

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — A cancer survivor is sharing his miraculous story after he was given a year to live.

74-year-old Danial "Danny" Millar lives in Jones on a ranch with hundreds of animals.

He had been battling numerous types of cancers for 25 years when things took a turn for the worse.

We spoke with him and his doctor about a special therapy he received, giving him a second chance at life.

"You can't feel sorry for yourself because nobody else is going to either," Danny said.

Danny is the type of man to always be looking forward, taking one step at a time.

He has never let much get him down, not even when he heard the news that his cancer was progressively getting worse.

"The follicular lymphoma I had for years had morphed to a very acute, different form of lymphoma," Danny said. "And he said, I can't handle this."

Danny's doctor told him it was time to find an expert for a possible treatment.

He was recommended to speak with Dr. Taha Al-Juhaishi at OU Health Stephenson Center.

"He was so cut and dry," Danny said. "He said, we can do nothing, you will last a year. We can go back to the stuff we've been treating your lymphoma with; we'll get two or three years out of it. Or, we can do this new treatment, which will cure you if it doesn't kill you."

"I tell my patients, if I leave, if I walk out that room and you don't feel hopeful, then I haven't done my job right," Dr. Al-Juhaishi said.

Danny believed this was his only shot at beating cancer, so he agreed to the somewhat newly approved treatment called CAR-T Therapy.

This kind of treatment is only offered at OU Health Stephenson Center.

"Collecting the cells outside of the body, they go to the lab," Dr. Al-Juhaishi said. "In the lab, they will add a new gene that can modify the cells and make them able to target a certain protein on the surface of the cancer cells, but also not just that, be able to like, kill the cells as a consequence of that and get rid of the disease."

Danny was ready to get on with it.

"Let's just get this done and get it out of the way and get back to the ranch," Danny said.

Like with most treatments, there are side effects. There was even the possibility that Danny may not survive.

"The complications that we talked to patients about short-term that could be this phenomenon called Cytokine Release Syndrome, which is essentially your overstimulation of your immune system," Dr. Al-Juhaishi said.

This led to multiple health issues and neurological problems for Danny.

"They made you write this little sentence, the national bird is the bald eagle," Danny said. "You had to write that down twice a day. Then, that's to check how your brain's working out. Well, about the fourth day, it was about this long, little squiggly lines. Didn't know much about the bald eagle. I didn't know Joan. I didn't know Doctor Al-Juhaishi."

Even through his worst moments, Danny never lost his sense of humor.

"We were back in the hospital for a little while, sent home with a stripper pole so I could get some IV antibiotics here at the house, and she took care of me," Danny said.

He was talking about his partner Joan, who stuck by his side through it all.

With that support and belief, treatment would work; the side effects started to wane after about a month, and improvements were starting to be seen.

Then, months later, they received the results they were always hoping for.

"They've both shown remission, and I think he feels good, so we're very happy for him," Dr. Al-Juhaishi said.

Danny is now two months cancer-free and back to doing what he loves.

Now, he has a different outlook on life.

"You're never cured of cancer," Danny said. "If you think they're going to kill 20 billion cells and get every damn one of them out, not going to happen. Oh, remission absolutely can last a lifetime. Absolutely. So, then that's how I had to look at it. And I think that's how all cancer patients have to look at it."

Dr. Al-Juhaishi says as of today, Danny doesn't need any more CAR-T Therapy.

They will continue to check in every few months to make sure he is doing okay.