A Brooklyn author who was dying of leukemia has had a remarkable turnaround. NY1's Jeanine Ramirez first brought us the story of Seth Kushner last Spring. What's happened since then, has defied the odds. She filed this report.
Brooklyn author Seth Kushner looks through some of the new projects he's working on now that he's home from the hospital.
He's still weak but recovering from his near death experience fighting of an aggressive form of leukemia.
"They said it was 100 percent chance I was going to die in the next few weeks. There was nothing more they could do for me," Kushner says.
Doctors told him that twice over his seven-month stay in the hosptial last September after a bone marrow transplant didn't help, and then again before Thanksgiving when he went into a coma. The hospital even told his wife and five-year-old son to come in and say goodbye.
"We had to tell him daddy was in a coma. He's not awake. He's going to die. It was the hardest thing I had to do. I don't know how I did it," says Kushner's wife, Terra Kushner.
What his wife also did was find an alternative treatment on her own—a non-FDA approved medicine from a doctor in Mexico that she administered herself.
"I felt like we had nothing to lose," she says.
"It wasn't a snake oil or a magical elixir. It was science-based," says Kushner.
Kushner also underwent six rounds of chemotherapy, but he prefers to believe it was the treatment arranged by his wife that saved him.
"The next day I woke up, to the shock of all of my doctors here in New York—something they can't explain to this day," he says.
Kusher says his bloodwork has come back cancer-free for the last two months. NY1 first reported on Kushner in 2007 when he released his book "The Brooklynites." Then again last year. NY1 reported on the Bay Ridge community that held a bone marrow drive to try to save him.
Kushner says while this is the longest he's been in remission, he's still cautious about his health. So are his doctors.
"I'm in uncharted territory for them. So they're not exactly sure how to treat me," he says.
Meanwhile, he remains optimisitic and looks forward to releasing more of his work including a graphic novel, a superhero comic called Brooklynite and a memoir on battling leukemia.