Blood cancer survivor takes center stage at Glitz Gala to share story
Gerald Owens survived two bouts of a rare blood cancer and underwent two stem cell transplants with specialized care from the experts at Baptist Cancer Center.
Two-time blood cancer survivor Gerald Owens has now been in remission for more than two years, and on Thursday, Feb. 26, he took the stage at Downtown Memphis’ Cadre Building to share his story with hundreds of guests during the fifth annual Glitz Gala.
The event celebrating cancer survivors was hosted by Pettigrew Adventures, a Memphis-based company that offers boutique luxury travel stays, and benefited both The Pink Wig Project and Baptist Cancer Center.
I’m happy to share with anybody who will listen. If I know somebody's going through something similar, I tell them about my experience.
Prior to his diagnosis in August 2020, Owens was a busy working professional, an avid traveler and a fitness enthusiast who worked out with a trainer several days a week.
A husband and father, Owens had been excitedly awaiting the arrival of his first grandchild.
“I was living life to its fullest until the day everything changed,” he said.
Owens, who was 48 at the time, began to lose his stamina and suffer from fatigue. After visiting his primary care doctor, he received a call about an issue with his bloodwork.
His PCP then scheduled an appointment with an oncologist who ordered a biopsy. The results: Owens had a blood cancer called myelodysplastic syndromes, or MDS, which causes low blood cell counts and can result in symptoms like fatigue, weakness, dizziness and shortness of breath.
“It results in people not making enough blood, and you need your blood to help prevent infection, stop infections, give you oxygen and to stop bleeding,” said Dr. Salil Goorha, a Baptist Cancer Center hematologist and oncologist who specializes in cancers and blood diseases. “When people have MDS, they become anemic from not getting enough oxygen in their body, and then they feel exhausted.”
The oncologist who diagnosed Owens gave him a grim prognosis, telling him the cancer was terminal.
I walked out of the office and basically broke down and cried in my wife’s arms because I felt I had so much more to live for.
But he sought a second opinion, which led him to Dr. Goorha and his dedicated team of experts at Baptist Cancer Center on the campus of Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis. It’s one of 27 centers providing cancer care across the Mid-South.
I've been with Baptist since 2011, and we've really built up a strong program to treat patients with blood cancer.
About one-third of MDS patients will develop acute myeloid leukemia, a more aggressive form of blood cancer. Although there are treatments that can increase blood counts and improve symptoms, such as anemia and fatigue, a stem cell, or bone marrow, transplant is the only potential curative treatment for MDS.
“Ultimately, unless we do a bone marrow transplant, a lot of patients with MDS will develop leukemia,” Goorha said. “We thought Gerald had a pretty high risk of developing leukemia, so we recommended doing a transplant.”
Transplant preparation requires carefully coordinated care from a team of experts.
“Every organ system matters,” said Baptist Cancer Center Data Manager Angie Young, a specialized nurse who served as Gerald's blood and marrow transplant coordinator. “You have to make sure their cardiac and pulmonary situations are fine and their liver is good, and if anything isn't OK, that has to be addressed first.”
In 2021, Owens underwent several months of chemo treatments to prepare his body for an allogeneic transplant, in which the patient receives healthy stem cells from a donor — in this case, Owens’ adult son.
Meanwhile, this was all unfolding for Owens during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That kind of made things a little tricky, as far as my immune system and having to go back and forth to the doctors,” he said.
After his transplant, Owens grappled with fatigue, hair loss and sleepless nights due to pain.
“I was weak some days, but I always had hope and tried to keep the faith,” he said. “And I think that's the most important thing when you're going through something like this.”
Owens went into remission, but a year and a half later, during a checkup in June 2023, he learned there had been a recurrence of the cancer.
Since I'd been through it before, I was ready to fight this battle again. And the people at Baptist were just so supportive and so attentive to my needs, and that really helped.
With the support of his wife Netasha, who’d been with Owens every step of the way, and his trust in the Baptist Cancer Center team, Owens in November 2023 underwent a second allogeneic stem cell transplant, this time from a donor in Brazil.
Young said Owens’ positive attitude and deep involvement in his own care positively affected his treatment experience.
“He was very engaged in his care and wanted to know how everything worked and what everything meant, and he had the most positive attitude about everything,” she said.
The procedure was a success, and Owens has remained cancer free for more than two years.
“Tomorrow's not promised, so I try to live my life to its fullest and live in the present,” he said.
During his recent speech at the gala, Owens gave a shout-out to all the cancer survivors in the audience and encouraged them to join him in giving a big round of applause to Goorha and his team from Baptist Cancer Center.
It turned out Owens wasn’t the only person in the audience whose life had been saved by Goorha.
“Something that Gerald and I have in common is that we actually share an oncologist: Dr Goorha, who is here with us tonight,” said Laura-Kathryn Mosby, board president of the 2026 Glitz Gala and a blood cancer survivor.
Dr. Goorha treated Mosby’s Stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and the young mother of triplets just celebrated five years being cancer-free.
As for Gerald Owens, he said his battle with cancer has allowed him to share his testimony with others. He shared with the audience the Bible verse that helped guide him through those darker days.
Just remember Philippians 4:13: ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.'
About Baptist Cancer Center
Baptist Cancer Center provides world-class cancer care close to home throughout Baptist Memorial Health Care’s tristate area of Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to patient care, Baptist Cancer Center offers treatment, research, support services, community education and the area's first genetic counseling and testing program for cancer.
