Six Years After Leukemia, He Is Rebuilding the Life Cancer Changed at 21

William Yank was at work when the call came. The fertility clinic told him his results indicated he had no viable sperm.

“I was like, ‘Nothing, like absolutely nothing? You’re telling me there’s not even like a surprise?’” Yank said.

Years earlier, at 21, cancer had taken him through chemotherapy, two relapses, CAR T-cell therapy and a stem cell transplant. His sole goal was to survive.

By 2024, Yank had returned to school, graduated and built a career. Cancer was no longer consuming his days. The fertility result, however, took away an option he did not yet know whether he would choose, one he had assumed would still be his to make. It became another part of cancer he had to navigate after treatment was over.

Yank began working through what the result could mean for future relationships and how it affected the way he saw himself.

“I’m not damaged goods. I have plenty to offer,” he said. “But I can view aspects of my life as though I’m damaged.”

Six years into remission, those conversations remain part of a longer process of rebuilding a life that changed almost overnight when he was 21.

Before Cancer, He Felt ‘On Cloud 11’

The summer after his junior year of college, Yank moved to Washington, D.C., for a competitive internship off Capitol Hill.

He was a full-time student studying English literature and business, had signed a modeling contract and was experimenting with YouTube videos and content creation. He also competed in the triple jump, long jump and high jump on his college track team.

“There’s Cloud Nine, and there’s Cloud 11. I was on Cloud 11,” Yank said. “I was super excited about life when I was 21.”

That summer, he began noticing pain in the joints of his hands. At first, he brushed it off. He was young and healthy and did not think anything serious could be wrong.

When his friend Zach visited from Indiana, he noticed Yank could no longer keep up during runs and workouts the way he used to. Soon after, a severe sore throat sent Yank to urgent care, where clinicians told him he had mononucleosis.

He went home and spent the next several days eating applesauce and mashed potatoes because his throat had swollen so much that swallowing became difficult.

Soon after, his roommate noticed how physically weak Yank had become when he could not open the refrigerator to get a glass of water. He was taken to the emergency department, where doctors diagnosed him with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a cancer of the blood and bone marrow, along with a serious staph infection.

“I was so sick,” he said. “I was experiencing organ failure. Organs were shutting down.”

Within days, the life he had been building at 21 had been replaced by hospital rooms, treatment and the uncertainty of what came next.

Going From a Track Athlete to Physical Therapy in Bed

Yank was transferred to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and began chemotherapy the next day. He considers those first weeks the most physically difficult part of his treatment.

Fluid retention caused him to gain approximately 50 to 60 pounds in a short period. When staff helped him stand, he sometimes passed out, and physical therapy began from his hospital bed. For someone who had been running, training and competing on a college track team weeks earlier, the sudden loss of strength was difficult to process.

“My entire identity was shifting and changing,” he said.

His mother, who worked at a mental health clinic, connected him with a therapist early in treatment, while his care team started him on medication for anxiety and depression. As treatment continued, Yank said some of the hardest moments came from losing privacy and control over his own body.

At times, he asked his mother to have everyone leave so he could have space to cry alone. Weekly phone calls with his therapist gave him somewhere to process the fear, frustration and changes to his identity rather than push them aside.

“This cancer was staying with me,” Yank said. “This isn’t a flu. This isn’t bronchitis that’ll go away for a while.”

Each Remission Let Him Start Living Again

When chemotherapy did not completely clear the leukemia, Yank underwent CAR T-cell therapy, which uses modified immune cells to recognize and attack cancer.

The treatment brought him into remission, and for about six months, tests showed no measurable residual disease, meaning no leukemia could be detected at the level being measured. During that time, Yank began returning to parts of the life he had before treatment.

Then the leukemia came back.

“The first relapse, I was like, OK, we’ve done this once, we can do it again,” he said.

A second CAR T-cell infusion led to another remission. In the months that followed, Yank began preparing to return to college. After spending much of his life centered around hospitals and treatment, he moved back to campus and started classes, beginning to settle into a routine again.

Two weeks into the semester, the leukemia returned for a second time.

“I was back into life and then had it just torn back away again,” he said.

This time, his treatment options were becoming more limited. His oncologist told him they would need to move forward with a stem cell transplant, with his older sister becoming his donor.

“OK, this is the real deal,” Yank recalled thinking. “This is going to determine a lot of my future.”

Cancer Made Him Plan for For the Future

When Yank was first diagnosed, fertility preservation was not something he or his family had time to consider. He was critically ill and needed treatment immediately. Before a later round of treatment, however, his oncology team helped him preserve sperm while he was also completing an advance directive outlining what he wanted to happen if he died.

He was still in his early 20s, without a spouse or children, making decisions about death while also trying to preserve the possibility of one day having a family.

“I feel young to be making this decision,” Yank recalled. “What does that mean for my future spouse and partner in my relationships?”

Years later, fertility testing showed he had no viable sperm, a result that began shaping how he approached dating and future relationships. Yank said he is often open about his fertility early on, telling someone within the first few dates that having children may not be possible for him.

“If this is something that you would like to do, if you would like to have kids naturally, I’m not your person,” he said.

For some people, it has been a deal breaker, and Yank said he does not blame them. But understanding another person’s decision has not always made rejection easier or protected his own sense of self-worth.

Those experiences became another topic in therapy, where he worked through how infertility had changed the way he viewed himself and what he believed he could offer a future partner.

What does recovery mean six years after B-cell ALL?

Six years after entering remission, Yank now works full time in investment operations and client service, while mental health remains one of the areas he continues to navigate. He still takes medication for anxiety and depression and recently had a morning when he could not get out of bed and was late to work. He said being open about those moments helps show what survivorship can still look like years later.

“It’s worthy to pursue a career. It’s worthy to pursue a dream. It’s worthy to pursue a relationship still, even though it may not be what I thought it would look like before I got sick,” he said.

As a former track athlete, Yank also approaches his physical health differently. He once centered exercise around training and performance. Now, he focuses more on what he can realistically maintain, whether that is yoga, walking, getting his steps in or fitting in a shorter workout after work.

If he could speak to the 21-year-old version of himself, before the hospital stays, relapses and years of treatment, the first thing he would say is, “You’re not invincible.”

Cancer at a young age gave Yank an earlier awareness of mortality and changed how he moves through life and thinks about what is still ahead.

“You’re gonna make it,” he said. “But just make sure you stay open to learning along the way and stay curious.”

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