Stromberg Strong

This past September, there was an article in the KSL news titled "Utah brothers battling same rare cancer that took their youngest sibling 10 years ago." In it, the article talked about Jared and Cody Stromberg's youngest brother, Blake. He passed away in November 2010. What was thought to be an isolated form of Leukemia turned out to be a genetic mutation called Schwachman-Diamond Syndrome, which led to the MDS that took Blake's life. This genetic mutation has since affected Cody and Jared Stromberg as well. At the time of the article, Cody was in the fight for his life. Cody’s cancer had started as MDS and progressed to AML. He passed away a few months later in December 2020. Jared's diagnosis came in July 2020.

As some background information, Schwachman-Diamond Syndrome is a very rare inherited disease where the bone marrow malfunctions and cannot make all or some types of white blood cells. Individuals with Schwachman-Diamond Syndrome are at an increased risk of developing blood cancer and Myelodysplasia Syndrome (MDS) like Jared and his brothers.

MDS was referred to as a "pre-leukemia". Since then they gave it a name of Myelodysplasia syndrome. A bone marrow failure disease that 1 in 3 patients will develop into Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) such as Cody. Blake and Jared had MDS. AML and MDS is usually found in adults over 60, rarely in younger, otherwise healthy, adults. The typical treatment involves chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant.

After health issues last July, Jared received the news that he had MDS like his brothers. It was caught early enough that doctors were hopeful that with chemotherapy treatments and bone marrow transplant Jared would be ok. After a few months of chemotherapy, Jared received his bone marrow transplant in November 2020. He spent a month in the hospital. Because of COVID-19, his wife, Lacey was able to stay with him for a couple of weeks in the hospital. He wasn't able to see his son, JJ, at all. It was challenging on their small family, but all seemed to be going as they hoped.

In February, mostly good news. Jared had no cancer left and had 95% donor cells with only 5% of the mutated cells left. They were hopeful that with chemotherapy treatments and donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI) shots of the same donor cells it would blast the rest of the mutated cells away. By March, the 5% took over and Jared’s cancer was back. Doctors told the Stromberg’s the best course of action would be to continue stem cell treatments (DLI shots) to boost the donor cells while adding in two chemotherapy treatments. Jared has been undergoing this treatment for the last few months. He's been in and out of the hospital still fighting the awful cancer that has taken the life of his 2 brothers. If the DLI doesn’t work, the next step will be another transplant or a clinical trial. 

We want to raise funds to help Jared, his wife Lacey, and his son, JJ, deal with the financial toll of this awful disease.   

Venmo handle is @stromberstrong (under the name Julie Myers)