S5 Ep34: ‘Queer Eye’ Star Thom Filicia on Bone Marrow Donation and Myelofibrosis

<div>It’s been a decade since Thom Filicia, acclaimed interior designer and former co-star of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” served as a bone marrow donor for his brother, Jules, who had received a diagnosis of myelofibrosis.<br> <br> “It was a disease I knew nothing about, I’d never even heard of it before,” Filicia told CURE®. “So that, in and of itself, was a very unusual situation, to have to navigate that. … In (Jules’) situation, we needed to move very quickly. And, in his case, the most appropriate (treatment) at that time, was a bone marrow transplant, so that's what we needed to do.”<br> <br> Myelofibrosis, as explained by the MPN Research Foundation, is a type of chronic blood cancer that involves the formation of excessive scar tissue in the bone marrow, impairing the patient’s ability to produce normal blood cells. It is part of a category of blood cancers known as myeloproliferative neoplasms, or MPNs.<br> <br> “Myelofibrosis is a challenge, because first of all, it’s (a) very rare disease, we’re talking about 25,000 people in the United States have this, maybe one in 500,000 people worldwide have this disease, so it’s a very rare disease,” explained Dr. Andrew Kuykendall of the department of malignant hematology at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. <br> <br> The presentation of myelofibrosis can also vary from patient to patient, as Kuykendall explained.<br> <br> “People can either present with just abnormal blood counts, they can present with painful abdominal pain or splenomegaly, where their spleen is enlarged or other organs can be enlarged, (or) it could be from having fevers, chills, night sweats, bone pain, a lot of symptoms that bring them to that healthcare,” Kuykendall said. “And so, it's one of those things where all those people could come with a variety of symptoms yet receive the same diagnosis. And I think that that's challenging because it doesn't necessarily present in one way. There's no kind of map. We often say, ‘The disease doesn't read the textbook,’ and that's very true w