Kevin Walsh eager to help brother Shawn in cancer fight

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Kevin Walsh says he has always idolized his older brother, Shawn. He even attended the college where his brother is the head hockey coach.

Now he may supply his brother with the most important gift of all: the gift of life.

Thirty-one-year-old Kevin has donated stem cells which will be transplanted in the University of Maine hockey coach’s bloodstream next month in the hope they will attack and kill his remaining cancerous cells.

Forty-six-year-old Shawn Walsh is suffering from a form of kidney cancer known as renal cell carcinoma.

The experimental procedure is known as stem cell transplantation.

In order for it to happen, the cancer victim needs a sibling who meets at least three of four criteria. Their immune systems have to be close to identical.

Despite the fact Walsh has seven brothers and sisters, Kevin was the only match.

“I met all four of the criteria,” said Kevin, who is excited about the prospect of helping his brother.

“I love the fact I can help him, especially being as intertwined as we are. I’m as close to Shawn as I am to anybody,” said Kevin. “He has taken good care of me.”

Kevin Walsh said he felt “so helpless” when his brother underwent unsuccessful immunotherapy treatments in Los Angeles in August and October.

“At least now I may be able to help him,” said Kevin.

Kevin lived at Shawn’s house for a year and half when he was going to Maine. Shawn will live at Kevin’s house in Annandale, Va., 16 miles from the National Institute of Health, while he is recuperating from the stem cell transplant.

The National Institutes of Health is in Bethesda, Md.

“I wore him out when I lived with him for that year and half. Now he can live with me for a few months,” said Kevin.

Kevin Walsh, a mortgage banker for Guaranty National, began the process of donating stem cells 11 days ago. Initially, there were “lots of blood tests” along with a transfusion and the harvesting of cells.

“The process took what it needed from me and then gave me back my blood. It was no big deal. The National Institutes of Health is so well set up,” said Kevin Walsh. “The toughest part was when they started giving me shots a week ago Wednesday to enhance the growth of bone marrow. That’s where the stem cells originate. Everybody has underdeveloped cells known as stem cells and they have the unique ability to grow into any type of cells: red blood cells or white blood cells.”

The doctors told him he might have aches because the cells were starting to grow and expand and proliferate. He certainly did.

“I didn’t know what to expect. I had no idea it would be like it was. I had intense bone aches and my lower back was a mess,” said Kevin Walsh, who wound up taking the painkiller Percocet on Saturday after receiving the shots.

“I don’t know if I could have gotten through it without the Perocet. It was like pulling an all-nighter in college and then feeling like you’d been in a train wreck [the next day],” said Walsh, who received a high dose of the drugs because it is based on body weight and he packs over 300 pounds on his 6-foot-8 frame.

However, he was quick to add “It is nothing compared to what Shawn is going through.”

The Walshes quickly learned that the reason Kevin experienced so much pain was a positive development.

“The normal stem cell count for a person is 50-to-70 per microgram of blood. For whatever reason, mine was 293. It was off the charts. The doctors were flabbergasted. Dr. [Richard] Childs did a double-take when I told him. He told me he thought it was the all-time record here,” said Kevin Walsh, who was the best man in his brother’s wedding to Lynne (Vickery). “That’s a great thing. It proved I was very receptive to the drugs and, hopefully, that will bode well for Shawn.”

Childs is Walsh’s doctor and works for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s Hematology Branch.

Kevin Walsh said the doctors are hoping stem cell transplantation could be the “Holy Grail” in curing kidney cancer and several other diseases.

The entire experience has been an eye-opener for the younger Walsh, who graduated from Maine in 1991 with a degree in public administration.

“I not only learned a lot but it increased my empathy for Shawn and other cancer patients. When you’re sitting in the waiting room at NIH, half the people there don’t have hair,” said Kevin. “It’s real sobering.”

When discussing his relationship with Shawn, Kevin said, “You talk about a younger brother worshiping an older brother … It was ridiculous. I wanted to do everything for him. I used to spend time with him during the summers when he was at Michigan State [as an assistant]. I had my first sip of beer on his lap.”

It has come as no surprise to him how positive and determined his big brother has been throughout this ordeal, which has already claimed his left kidney and left lung.

“That’s just him. He’s unbelievable. I tell people he was walking 17 hours after he had his lung removed. He’s an animal,” said Kevin proudly.

Kevin Walsh and his wife Leslie (Brammer), who are expecting their first child in July, flew out to Anaheim two years ago to share in his brother and the school’s NCAA hockey championship.