Mel Mann

@mel_mann_leukemia485K total followers

About

World’s Longest-Living Gleevec & TKI Survivor 🎗️ 31 years of defying the odds and making medical history. My mission is to turn "terminal" into "treatable" through patient advocacy, clinical trial education, and the power of hope. ✨ Keynote Speaker | Patient Advocate | Living Proof Sharing the journey to empower yours. Because a diagnosis isn’t the end—it’s a new chapter of resilience. Follow along for inspiration and the latest in patient advocacy. Beating the odds, one day at a time. 🙏

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Today, on World #CML Day (9/22), I pause to reflect on a journey that began more than 30 years ago with a life-changing diagnosis of chronic myeloid #leukemia. At that time, the future was uncertain and long-term survival was rare. By the grace of God, the dedication of researchers, and the breakthrough that came with clinical trials for Gleevec (imatinib), I stand here today as the longest-living #Gleevec survivor — part of a community of over a million survivors worldwide, and blessed to have lived more than 30 years beyond my diagnosis. This milestone is not mine alone. It belongs to every patient who entered a trial, every doctor who pushed science forward, every caregiver who offered strength, and every advocate who refused to give up hope. I’ve captured some of my journey, along with three decades of patient advocacy, in this 20-minute video. My hope is that it inspires patients and families to see that survival, progress, and purpose are possible. Together, let’s continue to shi

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1 yr

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World Record Bone Marrow Drive with 10,672 people

YouTube

12 yrs

Gleevec’s 25th Anniversary I’m honored to be part of the story. This drug changed cancer treatment – and medical research – forever : Short Wave Listen on Apple, Spotify, or NPR https://www.npr.org/2026/05/11/nx-s1-5812534/gleevec-cancer-medicine-drug-treatment-research

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5 mths

IF I HAD ONLY 3 MINUTES TO TELL A CANCER PATIENT EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LIVING WITH CANCER, THIS LETTER IS WHAT I WOULD SAY. Breathe. And it’s okay to be scared. Fear doesn’t make you weak; it means you understand the stakes. Speak up. Ask for second opinions. Ask about clinical trials early — not as a last resort. Be a partner with your medical team, not a passenger. Hope is not denial. Hope is a strategy. It’s showing up for the next appointment. It’s taking a pill, even when you’re tired of pills. Stay in the fight longer than you think you can. Sometimes the next option, the one that works, is closer than it looks. You can be realistic and hopeful at the same time. You are more than your diagnosis. You are still a parent, a spouse, a friend, a child of someone, a dreamer, a human being. Help someone when you can. Even a small act like answering a question that another patient has, or sharing your story can give your suffering a purpose. And if you forget any of this — t

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10 mths

21:08

I WAS BLESSED TO BE A PARTICIPANT IN THE GREATEST CANCER BREAKTHROUGH OF THE 21st CENTURY #GLEEVEC In this video, Dr. Brian Druker, MD, the researcher-physician behind the lifesaving drug #Gleevec, which works for 11 different cancers, discusses the origin of the drug with three of the original phase one clinical trial patients as he successfully prepared to run the 2025 Boston Marathon along with his daughter Julia. He and Julia also raised a significant amount of money for cancer research as past of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training. Over 1 million CML patients alone have benefited from the Gleevec (Imatinib) breakthrough. Gleevec saved me from terminal leukemia 27 years ago. It was the first Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor (TKI). There are now over 60 FDA-approved TKIs, which have helped millions of people. Watch the whole video here: https://lnkd.in/emZ6y3qt #TyrosineKinaseInhibitor #TKI #CML #leukemia #ClinicalResearch #clinicaltrials #LLS

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1 yr

1995 Marrow Drive (Three Years to Live)

This is a video used back in 1995 at one of my first Bone Marrow Drives when I had terminal leukemia and less than three years to live. This particular drive took place in Michigan. Blood is no longer required to be drawn at marrow drives. A cheek swab is all that is needed. I never found a donor. My healing came in a different way. This video gives a pretty good overview of the marrow donation process. Please consider being a donor, as there is still a great need for donors. Unlike twenty years ago, all that is needed initially is a cheek swab which you can do at home and mail in the kit. It's very easy. Check out how at http://Join.bethematch.org/MelMann Read my updated story at http://www.curetoday.com/community/mel-mann/2015/10/leukemias-lionheart-the-fight-of-a-lifetime Thanks, Mel. Also, check out the video Three Months to Live at http://youtu.be/UWX8xf8OibM Follow me on twitter at https://Twitter.com/MelDMann Hit that subscribe button for future updates.

YouTube

12 yrs

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"The people in cancer clinics all over the world need people who believe in miracles." — Terry Fox

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⠀ MARIE CURIE: THE SCIENTIST WHOSE RADIUM BECAME A CANCER TREATMENT In 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie announced two new elements pulled from uranium ore: polonium, then radium. Within a few years, doctors were placing radium against tumors to shrink them. The method came to be called "curietherapy." In 1903, at 36, she shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1911, at 44, she won again, in chemistry. She was the first person to win two. She died on July 4, 1934, at 66, of aplastic anemia linked to years of radiation exposure. Radiation took her life. It still saves cancer patients every day.

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PATIENT SPOTLIGHT: • SHILOH MIDDLEMISS • ACUTE MYELOID LEUKAEMIA (CHILDHOOD CANCER SURVIVOR) • AUSTRALIA Acute myeloid leukaemia struck Shiloh Middlemiss at 15, and she went through six months of intensive chemotherapy, total body irradiation and a stem cell transplant from her younger brother. The treatment saved her life. More than two decades later, she lives with late effects including diabetes, kidney disease and a second cancer. Now approaching 40 and working in cancer research, she is calling for lifelong, connected survivorship care, Children's Cancer CoLab reported in October 2026. Read story here: https://t.co/XFkc7kgRpO Story via Children's Cancer CoLab #Leukaemia #CancerSurvivorship

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"The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something." — Randy Pausch

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⠀ BETTY FORD: THE FIRST LADY WHO SAID BREAST CANCER OUT LOUD In 1974, breast cancer was something Americans barely talked about. Betty Ford had been first lady for seven weeks. On September 28, 1974, at 56, she had a mastectomy. She refused to keep it quiet. Women across the country started checking themselves. So many new cases turned up that the spike got its own name: the "Betty Ford blip." "I'm sure I've saved at least one person, maybe more," she said. She died on July 8, 2011. She was 93. She turned a private fear into a public checkup.

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PATIENT SPOTLIGHT: • VICKY TITCOMB • PANCREATIC CANCER • CAPE COD, MASSACHUSETTS, USA Pancreatic cancer was found in Vicky Titcomb, a Cape Cod bookstore owner, after a routine heart scan at Mass General Brigham in March 2025 flagged an abnormality on her pancreas. She felt healthy at the time, and a stage 1 breast cancer was found and treated along the way. Chemotherapy and radiation shrank the tumor enough for surgeons to perform a robotic Whipple procedure in November 2025. By March 2026, her care team told her there was no evidence of cancer. Read story here: https://t.co/jDUEcioPjc Story via CBS News #PancreaticCancer #EarlyDetection

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⠀ JANE COOKE WRIGHT: THE DOCTOR WHO MADE CHEMO A SCIENCE In the late 1940s, chemotherapy was a last resort. Doses were guesswork. Jane Cooke Wright, a young doctor at Harlem Hospital, joined her father's cancer lab in 1949. When he died in 1952, she took it over. Her idea was simple and bold. Grow a patient's own tumor cells in tissue culture, test the drugs there, and match treatment to the person. In 1964, she was the only woman among the seven doctors who founded the American Society of Clinical Oncology. She published more than 100 papers. She died on February 19, 2013. She was 93. Today, oncologists still match the drug to the tumor.

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PATIENT SPOTLIGHT: • GARY (FIRST NAME ONLY PER SOURCE) • STAGE 4 NON-HODGKIN LYMPHOMA • SAANICH, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA Stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma was diagnosed in Gary in 2009, and it came back after years of chemotherapy and a drug trial. With standard options exhausted, he was accepted at 82 into CLIC-01, Canada's first CAR T-cell therapy clinical trial, run by BC Cancer with The Ottawa Hospital. His own T-cells were engineered at BC Cancer's Conconi Family Immunotherapy Lab in Victoria and infused in March 2024. Four weeks later, his PET scan showed no sign of the cancer. Read story here: https://t.co/1gR3dJ087b Story via BC Cancer Foundation #Lymphoma #ClinicalTrials

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⠀ SIDNEY FARBER: THE DOCTOR WHO GAVE LEUKEMIA A FIGHT In 1947, a child in Boston with leukemia usually had weeks to months. No drug touched the disease. Sidney Farber, a pathologist at Children's Hospital, tried one anyway. He gave aminopterin, a drug that blocks folic acid, to 16 children. Ten went into remission. Temporary, but real. Many scientists scoffed at the young pathologist. He kept going. On May 22, 1948, a 12-year-old patient nicknamed "Jimmy" went on national radio, and the Jimmy Fund was born. Farber died working in his office on March 30, 1973. He was 69. Every chemotherapy drug since walked through the door he opened.

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PATIENT SPOTLIGHT: • DENE OCTOBER • STAGE 4 LUNG CANCER • DULWICH, LONDON, UK Stage 4 lung cancer was diagnosed in Dene October, a senior lecturer at the University of the Arts London, in 2021. Immunotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery and chemotherapy at the Cancer Centre at Guy's kept the disease in check until it spread to his ribs in 2025. In July 2026 he joined a clinical trial of TIL therapy, which multiplies immune cells taken from a patient's own tumour and gives them back to target the cancer. After treatment, his scan showed the measured tumours had shrunk by 90%. Read story here: https://t.co/ArwxzCLOHQ Story via Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust #LungCancer #ClinicalTrials

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⠀ WILLEM EINTHOVEN: THE MAN WHO WROTE DOWN THE HEARTBEAT Doctors knew the heart ran on electricity. They just couldn't read it clearly without getting at the heart itself. Willem Einthoven, a physiologist in Leiden, fixed that. Starting in 1901, he built a string galvanometer: a hair-thin wire stretched between huge electromagnets, its shadow traced onto moving photographic paper. The machine weighed about 270 kilograms, needed water cooling and took five people to run. But it picked up the heart's signal right through skin and bone. He labeled the waves P, Q, R, S and T. In 1924, he won the Nobel Prize. Every ECG printed today still uses his letters.

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PATIENT SPOTLIGHT: • EVELYN GONZALEZ • SPINAL MUSCULAR ATROPHY (SMA) • ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, USA Spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic disease that destroys the motor neurons controlling muscle strength, was diagnosed in Evelyn Gonzalez just after she turned 1. She has received the drug Spinraza since 2020, now through a port placed behind her ear. On Oct. 2, 2026, she became the first patient at Rady Children's Health Orange County to receive the new high-dose Spinraza regimen the FDA approved in March. The 8-year-old plays wheelchair soccer, goes ziplining and was crowned Mini Miss Wheelchair California 2026. Read story here: https://t.co/mtUppTIy6z Story via Rady Children's Health Orange County (CHOC) #SpinalMuscularAtrophy #Nusinersen

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⠀ OVERLOOKED PIONEERS: CARLOS FINLAY Havana, 1881. Yellow fever was killing thousands, and doctors blamed filth and foul air. Carlos Finlay, a Cuban eye doctor, said the killer had wings: a mosquito that bit the sick, then bit the healthy. He told an international sanitary conference. They laughed. He kept at it for nearly 20 years and wrote about 40 papers on the disease. In 1900, Walter Reed's U.S. Army commission tested his idea and proved it right. Reed credited Finlay. Mosquito control then helped William Gorgas push yellow fever back so the Panama Canal could be built. Finlay was nominated for the Nobel Prize seven times. He never won.

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PATIENT SPOTLIGHT: • KEAMOGETSWE • SEVERE APLASTIC ANAEMIA • SOUTH AFRICA Severe aplastic anaemia, a rare disorder in which the bone marrow stops making enough blood cells, was diagnosed in Keamogetswe at age 11. He came to depend on blood transfusions, often weekly, while infections kept putting him back in hospital. In January 2025 an unrelated matching stem cell donor was found. After his transplant he passed the critical first 100 days, and he is now back in school more often with far fewer hospital visits. Read story here: https://t.co/1P5hSF2lLF Story via DKMS Africa #AplasticAnaemia #StemCellTransplant

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"I keep on making what I can't do yet in order to learn to be able to do it." — Vincent van Gogh

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⠀ HARVEY CUSHING: THE SURGEON WHO MADE THE BRAIN OPERABLE In the early 1900s, bleeding was the wall brain surgery kept hitting. Harvey Cushing decided to get over it. At 32, Johns Hopkins put him in full charge of nervous-system surgery. He used X-rays to find tumors, operated slowly, and brought Riva-Rocci's blood pressure cuff back from Italy so surgeons could track patients on the table. In 1926 he teamed up with physicist William Bovie. Their electric knife sealed vessels as it cut, and Cushing went back into tumors other surgeons had called inoperable. He was the first surgeon who did nothing but the brain and spine. Every neurosurgeon since works in the field he started.

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PATIENT SPOTLIGHT: • BAMI • SEVERE BURNS AND SPINAL CORD INJURY • SEVILLE, SPAIN Severe burns, multiple traumatic injuries and a spinal cord injury left Bami in critical condition when he reached Hospital Universitario Virgen del Rocío. He spent nearly eight months between the ICU and the hospital's major burns unit, needing more than 20 operations. With physiotherapy and rehabilitation, he is now walking again, little by little, in 2026. Read story here: https://t.co/HatzpryJ11 Story via El Pespunte #BurnSurvivor #Rehabilitation

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⠀ TODAY IN MEDICAL HISTORY, OCT. 22: HANS KREBS In April 1933, Germany fired Hans Krebs for his Jewish ancestry. He landed in England, at Cambridge and then Sheffield. There, in 1937, he and William Johnson worked out how cells burn fuel for energy: the citric acid cycle. He mailed a short paper to Nature. The journal turned it down, saying it already had enough letters to fill its pages for weeks. It ran in Enzymologia instead. On October 22, 1953, the Karolinska faculty in Stockholm voted to give him half the Nobel Prize in medicine. Fritz Lipmann got the other half. Biology students still memorize the cycle a journal didn't have room for.

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PATIENT SPOTLIGHT: • TREVOR COOKE • AL AMYLOIDOSIS • POINT COOK, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA AL amyloidosis, a rare disease that starts in the bone marrow, badly damaged Trevor Cooke's heart and kidneys and left him using a wheelchair. In 2025, the 58-year-old had a double organ transplant, receiving a new heart and a new kidney. About 15 months later, he raced at the Australian Transplant Games in Tasmania and won bronze in both the 10 km time trial and the 30 km road race. "Not in my wildest dreams did I think that was a possibility," he said. Read story here: https://t.co/JoRGbMJzfx Story via Wyndham TV #Amyloidosis #OrganDonation

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"I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship." — Louisa May Alcott

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