{"id":2702,"date":"2021-03-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-24T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/familyhouseinc.org\/article\/family-house-stories-johnny-archibald\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T13:03:31","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T20:03:31","slug":"family-house-stories-johnny-archibald","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/familyhouseinc.org\/tl\/article\/family-house-stories-johnny-archibald\/","title":{"rendered":"Family House Stories: Johnny Archibald"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\n

In the summer of 2020, Johnny Archibald was a senior in college, preparing for his last year at Rochester Institute of Technology<\/a> in New York. He received a call from a recruiter at a high-profile tech company, based in California, about an engineering internship. Although skeptical at first, doubting the outcome, he continued through the interview process and ended up getting the engineering internship. He was to relocate to California, from New Hampshire, in August 2020. For a few weeks, before moving from the East Coast, he felt a bit off but dismissed his symptoms, as it was typical for him to have a viral infection each summer around this time. He was already on prednisone because of a bad poison ivy exposure that went systemic and assumed all would run it\u2019s course. \u201cMy last day taking prednisone was the day before I flew to California with two suitcases and a backpack,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

Johnny flew out of Boston and during the six-hour flight things were getting worse: most of the flight he held his head in his hands and he felt \u201cout of it.\u201d He experienced shortness of breath and took multiple trips to the bathroom to splash water on his face to try and feel better. His breathing continued to get worse. After landing at San Francisco International Airport, he picked up his rental car and drove quickly to get some Gatorade and water. He drove 45 minutes to his extended stay, brought his backpack into the room, drank as much fluids as he could to rehydrate, and fell asleep. When he woke up the next morning his gums were puffed up badly and his breathing was no better. After consulting Google with his symptoms, he went to Washington Hospital<\/a> in Fremont, California. He sat in the ER for four hours before he was seen, since his symptoms did not appear life-threatening, where they took his vitals and a COVID-19 test that was negative. After another four hours, they drew his blood, and by this time his cell phone battery had died. John vividly remembers, \u201cthe nurse came back in and flat out told me I had leukemia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

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He thought to himself, \u201cI am 22 years old. From New Hampshire, in California, and all by myself. I thought I was going to die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

John knew very little about leukemia<\/a>. He knew his grandfather had it and that it is a blood disease, cancer of the blood. John\u2019s grandfather passed away from a stroke that was a complication caused by leukemia. \u201cThe nurse let me use her phone to call my parents. I was in a serious motorcycle accident two years prior, so I knew this news would be hard on my parents. I had moved to New York, Pennsylvania and other places throughout the country for school and other internships, but told my parents I wanted to do this California internship on my own.\u201d John did make the trip alone but, after this diagnosis was delivered to his parents, his mother Gail assured him she would be on the next flight out, and she was. Gail was in disbelief when she got the call. She recalls the nurse came on the phone and said, \u201cGail, there is no question that he has leukemia and we\u2019re going to be airlifting him shortly.\u201d Right after that call, the medical team sedated John and airlifted him across the San Francisco Bay to UCSF Benioff Children\u2019s Hospital<\/a> where he would receive treatment.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

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John\u2019s parents, Gail and Gary, remember feeling \u201cautomatically enveloped in a bubble of disbelief, where it was safe, while you try and hold it together.\u201d 12 hours later Gail was on the first flight out of Boston.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

\u201cOnce I got there I saw Dr. Betsy Young and had to sign my life away for the chemo treatment,\u201d John said. \u201cIt took her 30 minutes to tell me all the potential side effects and that it was UCSF\u2019s first emergency chemotherapy in a decade.\u201d It was not until later that John realized that he was really sick. His white cell blood count was 260,000\u2014normal levels are usually between 4,500 to 11,000 WBCs per microliter, according to UCSF Health<\/a>.  \u201cMy blood was \u2018basically sludge\u2019, they said.\u201d It was a mystery as to why John was still alive but no doubt he was rapidly declining. When Gail arrived, John was in the PICU and the first thing he said to her was, \u201cI don\u2019t want to die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

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\u201cYou think you have gotten past falling apart, but I find, even as I get further away from it, when you look back, it\u2019s very dark.\u201d Gail recounted recently. \u201cI spent the afternoon with him in the PICU<\/a> and, listening to the weekend team, they didn\u2019t know anything yet and needed to run tests to understand what kind of leukemia he had. Sitting in a small dark room with him, trying to process everything being thrown at us\u2014you can\u2019t prepare for that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

The first nurse John remembers well is Ryan who was his chemo charge nurse throughout his six month stay in the hospital. \u201cRyan kept it real with me,\u201d John shared recently. \u201cI was in the pediatric intensive care unit and nurses there are used to talking with parents, not kids, and certainly not young adults like me. Ryan was not too much older than me and he told me like it was. It was honestly the most reassuring thing to me: someone being fully transparent with me about what was going on.\u201d It was at that point, John felt, that he understood what he was up against, and that provided a certain sense of relief.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

They didn\u2019t know how bad John\u2019s leukemia was, so for the next few weeks they didn\u2019t know what his chances were, and John remembers being \u201cin and out of it\u201d quite a bit. Luckily, both of John\u2019s parents work for themselves and they were able to switch off being with him in San Francisco throughout his entire treatment. \u201cMy parents went through it worse than I did. I had the best medicine, the best doctors in the world. If I needed to sleep that was taken care of; needed help with the pain: that was handled. While it sucked for me, I can\u2019t imagine what it was like for my parents.\u201d Thankfully, Gail and Gary didn\u2019t have to worry about money or meals when it came to being there for their son. Family House<\/a> was a short walk away and they were able to get connected through the social worker at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital within days of arriving in San Francisco. While Family House doesn\u2019t typically house families other than those with patients under 18 years of age, they made an exception for the Archibald family.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

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\u201cWe got this gift from Family House,\u201d Gail said. \u201cThank you isn\u2019t enough. How do you express how grateful, first of all that our son is on the other side of cancer, and most importantly I was housed for nothing. I wouldn\u2019t have been able to be there with him, wouldn\u2019t have been able to start and finish his treatments with the experts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

\"John,
John is cancer-free and rings the bell at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

Due to the pandemic, the community connections at meal times and with activities have been halted for safety reasons, but Gail was still able to safely connect with Family House staff like Calvin, Janie, Sarah, Tyler, and Maria, along with another mom that had been staying at Family House for the past year. Gail would be at the hospital with John for 10-12 hours of the day, and remembers, \u201cI could go \u2018home\u2019 to my little apartment at Family House and settle in, and just feel safe and protected and watched out for. Seriously I don\u2019t know what I would have done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

John\u2019s story is a remarkable one of recovery and perseverance. He completed four rounds of chemotherapy at UCSF for acute myeloid leukemia<\/a> over a six month period and was able to ring the bell to celebrate being cancer-free on January 24, 2021. An east coast pizza connoisseur, he tested as many pizza places in the city as he could, and even managed to take two online RIT classes. He will graduate from RIT in May 2021 with a degree in mechanical engineering and will be back in the Bay to complete that internship that was graciously deferred to when he could return.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

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John returned to RIT after chemotherapy in San Francisco and a short visit home in New Hampshire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

\u201cIt already feels like a lifetime ago. I like to think that I was lucky. And no parent should have to watch that, it was really hard on them. But all in all I like to think this was a happy story,\u201d John noted. \u201c[I] got very, very lucky with everything. There\u2019s a lot of young kids that didn\u2019t make it out of the hospital, and I did. Spent six months listening to kids cry and scream during treatment. Everyone was great at UCSF\u2014some of the best doctors and nurses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

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\u201cI\u2019m just in awe of [Johnny],\u201d Gail shared. \u201cI\u2019m blessed that I could be there, and that we could stay, and could see it through with Dr. Stieglitz, Dr. Marinoff, and the team of researchers, fellows, and nurses at UCSF. And truly if Family House hadn\u2019t let me stay, I have no idea what the other side would have looked like. I don\u2019t know that we would have been able to complete his treatment in San Francisco. I\u2019m grateful I could be with him every step of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\t\n

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