Reality TV show, cancer patient come to Omaha for transplant

Tuesday, the Nebraska Medical Center will once again be in the national spotlight, featured on the reality television show 19 Kids and Counting.

The show focuses on the lives of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their 19 biological children. Recently, the program has also included the Dillard family, when Derick Dillard married one of the Duggar children, Jill. His mother, Cathy Dillard Byrum, has battled Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, a fight that brought her to Nebraska Medicine last fall.

Dillard Byrum recently spoke to KETVs Brandi Petersen via Skype from her home in Arkansas.

I feel wonderful, Im back to my old self, Dillard Byrum said. She added that through her faith, she was always confident she would beat the cancer, despite a grim diagnosis. When doctors first diagnosed the cancer after a node biopsy, they determined it was stage four and had spread to Dillard Byrums spleen, liver and bone marrow.

I learned that he had not had anyone survive that at the time, said Dillard Byrum. I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. I knew I wasnt going to die, but I didnt know how close I would come.

Dillard Byrum describes a grueling chemotherapy regimen, and a fall in her bathroom in the weeks leading up to her sons wedding, shown on 19 Kids And Counting. Doctors later told her with her weakened body from the chemo, she could have bled out in her bathroom from that fall.

About a week before the wedding, and I think you saw this on the show, they air-flighted me, thinking they were going to have to do brain surgery a week before the wedding, said Dillard Byrum. And my doctor told me later he didnt think Id survive the helicopter flight to the other hospital.

She did, and by the end of the summer tests showed the chemotherapy had been successful. Dillard Byrums next step was a stem cell transplant to try and prevent the high-risk cancer from returning. Dillard Byrums doctor told her he wanted her to go to Omaha.

I thought, why Omaha? said Dillard Byrum. I learned, especially over the course of being there, thats the go-to place for this kind of lymphoma.

Dr. Julie Vose, an oncologist and hematologist with Nebraska Medicine, became Dillard Byrums doctor.

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Reality TV show, cancer patient come to Omaha for transplant