Welcome Home - A Podcast for Veterans, About Veterans, By Veterans
Welcome Home is a Willing Warriors and the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run project. The program highlights activities at the Warrior Retreat and issues impacting all Veterans. For questions or feedback, please email us at podcast@willingwarriors.org.
Welcome Home - A Podcast for Veterans, About Veterans, By Veterans
Super Cells: How CAR-T Therapy Changed One Veteran's Cancer Battle
When Navy Captain Jeffrey Sapp began feeling unusually fatigued while working in Saudi Arabia, he initially brushed it off. This decision nearly cost him his life. Medevaced to Georgetown University Hospital, he received devastating news—he had primary plasma cell leukemia, a rare and aggressive blood cancer with a typical survival rate of just 7-12 months.
Captain Sapp takes us through his remarkable military career commanding six ships and serving as aide-de-camp to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before sharing the harrowing details of his cancer journey. After five consecutive days of chemotherapy and 24-hour dialysis to address kidney failure, doctors still weren't optimistic about his chances. That's when an experimental treatment called CAR-T cell therapy entered the picture.
This groundbreaking therapy—where scientists extracted his T-cells, genetically re-engineered them to specifically target cancer cells, and reinfused them—has kept him in near-complete remission without chemotherapy since 2023. The treatment, costing approximately $450,000, represents decades of painstaking research that simply wouldn't exist without consistent funding.
"When you cut funding for someone who has cancer, it's like taking a life vest off of someone who is drowning and calling it budget reform," Sapp explains with unmistakable urgency. As we mark Leukemia Awareness Month, his story serves as a powerful reminder of what's at stake when research funding faces cuts—real lives hang in the balance.
Sapp encourages listeners to become advocates by learning about cancer, engaging with those affected, and speaking up for continued research. Even as he now faces a new diagnosis of prostate cancer, his message remains steadfast: "Never give up, never surrender." His journey from military leader to cancer survivor to passionate advocate reminds us all that behind every research dollar are countless stories of hope, perseverance, and lives worth saving.
Be sure to check out Captain Sapp's excellent TED Talk.
Good morning. I'm your host, Larry Zilliox, Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run this week. Our guest is Jeffrey Sapp. He's a retired Navy captain and he authored a paper and a TED Talk that caught my attention and it's called Cancer Didn't Kill Me, but Disastrous Government Funding Cuts to Cancer Research Might and I asked Jeffrey to join us. He has primary plasma cell leukemia. September is Leukemia Awareness Month, so I wanted him to come on and talk about his journey and some of the research that affected his life and the cuts that may come to that. I think. Jeffrey, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, larry, pleasure to be here. So if you would, for our listeners, explain to them what a Navy captain is, because they might be used to Air Force, army Marine Corps captain is a little bit different.
Jeffrey Sapp:A little bit different. Well, in the Navy we work for a living. That's the first difference. Now Air Force and Army are great guys. It is equivalent to a lieutenant colonel Correction, a colonel in the Air Force, army and other services. Okay.
Larry Zilliox:So you would be in the Navy, you would be a commander, would be a lieutenant colonel and then a captain would be full bird.
Jeffrey Sapp:Yes, sir, Okay good.
Larry Zilliox:Talk a little bit about the start of your career when you joined. I know you're a graduate of the Naval Academy. You played football for the Naval Academy, which is really cool. When was that? When did you join?
Jeffrey Sapp:1973. Wow, my dad was focused on getting one of his sons into a Naval Academy, into an academy. My oldest brother went to Vietnam. He's off the table. My second oldest brother went to the FBI Academy he's off the table. Come to Jeffrey. He's the last one there. Now this is high school. I had over 62 athletic scholarships or letters of intent you know to go to schools.
Jeffrey Sapp:I didn't need any of this stuff. But he really pressed and said I really want you to do that. He's an old Army guy and back in the day if you're black you couldn't be an officer and if you did during the war they would propone them up and then put them back down to warrant after that. So he wanted really to see one of his sons come out as an officer and he put the pressure on. I like to say we took a vote about if we were going to go or not. I won the vote, he vetoed the vote and I went to the Nathan Academy.
Jeffrey Sapp:Okay, While I was there I felt outclassed. They have some very intelligent people there, fantastic faculty. I had to struggle and there were some times they wanted to invite me to go home, but I stuck in there, got my grades up, went great, made it to graduation and, by the way, I didn't graduate at the bottom, which obeys me based on my performance. I got out. I became what they call a surface warfare officer, going to sea. You have submarines, you have pilots, you have service warfare officers. So I went to sea. Long story short 11 and a half years at sea is what I spent, which was fantastic. The best part about that, though, was, as I got more mature, more senior, I actually got command of a ship, and I got command of another ship, and I got command of another ship. Wow, Another ship, Six ships. The best one was the destroyer, USS Ingersoll DD-990.
Larry Zilliox:Wow.
Jeffrey Sapp:That's the one that I would die for. To go back to take command of Wow and being in command of a warship is a beautiful thing Kangaroo Shore, basically strategy policy things like that. I did have an opportunity to serve as a senior aide-de-camp to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is really interesting, and deputy director of the Navy-wide personnel system, which was kind of cool with it. So I've been at some pretty good high levels with my career. Towards the end, when I decided to get out to retire after 30 years, I ended up going to do a motivational speaking, which is that's my main thing motivational speaking to encourage people, inspire them to achieve higher levels of success. I also did business consulting and leadership consulting and being a leadership advisor.
Larry Zilliox:I was that for Department of Homeland Security, for National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Gosh, I can't think of the other ones that I was, but it all was helping federal agencies increase the performance of their workforce, Right, and so it gave me a little bit of experience there, Tell a little bit about that period of time where you started to get sick and my recollection is you're overseas on assignment and then came back to the States for medical treatment and testing and then there's a point in time where doctors say to you you have a very serious illness and it's a very rare illness and it has a very low mortality rate. When was that? What was that like?
Jeffrey Sapp:job with the defense contractor to work in Saudi Arabia, work and live in Saudi Arabia overseeing projects that supported the Royal Saudi Naval Forces. So I was in their headquarters and speak with the admiral every day and other folks like that. The exciting part of it was it was like a clean sheet to apply my knowledge and my skills to, and it was going great. I made great associations and great friends with the Saudis. Matter of fact, I wouldn't mind going back there and living because they treated me very well and if you reciprocate it, they treated you even better. So that's how I was doing.
Jeffrey Sapp:And then, all of a sudden, I started feeling really tired, not tired like I woke up in the morning. I didn't get a good night's sleep. I felt fatigued, I was losing weight, I couldn't urinate, I felt dizzy and confused and everyone said go see a doctor. No, not, you know, I'm sucking up buttercup, you know. Finally, I went to go see a doctor. They went in Saudi. They ended up hospitalizing me for five days.
Jeffrey Sapp:They said I had something called monoclonal gonopathy, of undetermined source or significance, which was it's like a precursor to cancer. Not everyone who has it called, mgus, for short, everyone with MGUS doesn't develop cancer but some do. I was one of the some that did so. When they saw that they figured that two reasons Getting lab work over in Saudi sometimes takes a day a month, a week. They suggested I come back to the States where I can get better treatment, where they do it more often for cancer, in case I had it. They thought it was coming on so they medevaced me. They discharged me on a Friday afternoon I think it was Friday afternoon. They flew me Friday night to the United States.
Jeffrey Sapp:I arrived the next day, went to an ambulance, went right to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital where they had a room waiting for me and put me right in, and that's when I started to think that something more was going on. While I was in the room, they were doing blood tests to confirm things. I developed pneumonia, I had extreme pain in my body and the doctors decided that it was life threatening, and so they put me in intensive care, and that's where I stayed for the next 45 days Wow, until they let me go and to do more stuff. When I was in the hospital, the doctor came out and told my wife before all of this started. I got to tell you that he may not go home, basically, or die there with it.
Jeffrey Sapp:It turned out I had so much of the cancer in my body. Primary plasma cell leukemia is a blood-borne cancer. When it's in you, you can't radiate it, you can't cut it out, it is all over the place. And what had happened? With me dragging my feet, seeing a doctor and taking my time? It started to build up. Cancer had a very good foothold in my body. And so what the doctors ended up doing to save my life?
Jeffrey Sapp:I went through five consecutive days of chemotherapy. Try one, not fun, try five. I also went through a dialysis 24-hour dialysis by my midwife to change out the toxins in my blood because my kidneys had shut down. There's something called M-protein that gets into your kidneys, kind of shuts them down. So they zapped me with chemo. They zapped me, they gave me the dialysis and then they started to treat me. I still got chemo every other day or some frequency there, but they had to go in and kill what was there and chemo, as you know, wipes everything out. It's not all a lot of fun, but that got me on track and went to the next phase of my treatment.
Larry Zilliox:All right, which part of your treatment would you say was the most successful or brought you the most relief?
Jeffrey Sapp:Brought me the most relief, as easily as called CAR-T cell therapy.
Larry Zilliox:Okay.
Jeffrey Sapp:Now this is kind of neat and this is also why I'm an advocate for research funding and why we got to keep it up. 20, 30 years ago you never would have imagined CAR T. No one did. And back then you go back about 10, 20 years when people got primary plasma cell leukemia. The longevity was seven months to 12 months, depending on what story you look at. And then if you did well and you got over it, it never, ever really went away. It's in your system because the cancer's there.
Jeffrey Sapp:So what CAR-T does is this they take your body, they zap it with chemo, they kill the cells again. This is leading up to the treatment where I was hospitalized, I think, for 30 days. While I was zapped, they took out my T cells, immune cells, sent them off to a laboratory and they re-engineered them to go specifically after cancer. It's like a special ops team is to the military specifically. So it doesn't go after my hair, it doesn't go after my liver, my heart, it goes right there. And you know what? It was an interesting way that they gave it to me and I had responded, but in the long and short of it, it killed the cancer. It didn't kill all the cancer.
Jeffrey Sapp:I'm what they call near complete remission. I still have cancer. I will always have cancer. I'll probably die of cancer, that's not a problem. But the CAR-T better than the chemotherapy, was able to get me on steady state. I have not since 2023, have not had chemotherapy and up to that point I've been through one, two, three, four different treatments, multiple variations of chemo drugs and anti-cancer drugs. It put me in remission temporarily, but then it always come back. That's when the doctor said we have a clinical trial. You should go for and for CAR T therapy, explained what it was and they're very, very careful about it?
Larry Zilliox:Yeah, so they take these T cells out of your blood. Did you feel different?
Jeffrey Sapp:No.
Larry Zilliox:Okay. Not at all, and when they put them back in the new recharged ones, did you feel any different?
Jeffrey Sapp:No sir.
Larry Zilliox:No, you don't feel any different.
Jeffrey Sapp:One thing about that I got to tell you. I mean, this is some high-level stuff. Taking a sale, reengineering it and giving it back. I mean you talk death, you talk illness, you talk all sorts of stuff it could be associated with it. To make sure that it took and also to make sure that I didn't suffer from neurotoxicity. That was one of their main things to see. If they took, if I started to act goofy and my brain power was starting to die, they had to do something else. So the way they checked that, they gave me a statement to read and it says I got my super sales at VCU. You had to read that and simple enough to do and you also had to write.
Jeffrey Sapp:I got my super sales at VCU and then a nurse would come in and say what's that on the wall? A clock? What's that A desk? What's that A pencil? Okay, you're confined with it. I thought it was kind of silly. But you know what? There's a time and I have it in my book, I'm coming out with an example of it where my writing was perfect and then on day five after the transplant it looked like a kidney carmine or Rydland. I couldn't read it myself with it, and then I couldn't say what the T-cells did for me and anything like that, so I was hinting on the neuroplexicity. They got on top of it, they fixed it, discharged me for 30 days. I had to live next to the hospital for 30 days, going every single day to be checked to make sure that the TESOLs were doing what they're doing, and so when you were writing and it was going south on you?
Larry Zilliox:did you realize it?
Jeffrey Sapp:No, yeah, I did not. I did not at all. I had trouble doing the letters, but in my mind's eye I was doing great. But if you look at it and again I put it in my book you look at when I first started it looks great. Look at that one day and that was a tipping point for me that one day where I was totally jacked up. They got on top of it and got me back on track.
Larry Zilliox:And I did great. So that was something that they did every day to just check cognitively that you were maintaining a straight line.
Jeffrey Sapp:Every single day.
Larry Zilliox:And so this program was experimental. This is not a therapy that is available today to anybody who wants it, needs it, or is it still in the experimental stage?
Jeffrey Sapp:It's still experimental. The clinical trials is where the experiment comes in. It's experimental through the sense that it's accepted by FDA, but they're still kind of checking it out, and so I'm part of that. The one thing with me because I had dialysis, I had my kidney wiped out. They ended up making my own unique FDA clinical trial with CAR T therapy to see how I reacted to it, with the kidney not being there, as opposed to other people who didn't have that kind of situation.
Jeffrey Sapp:Yes, sir, and it turned out that it did well. I went back up follow up.
Larry Zilliox:It turns out that they used what they learned from me as a protocol for helping other people for helping other people, and do they, the folks behind the clinical trial, have any sort of understanding or maybe an estimate of when they believe that this might be a therapy that's available to anybody who needs it, out of clinical trial but into mainstream medical treatment? Never had that conversation.
Jeffrey Sapp:Wow, I was just happy to be alive with it. The only thing that they told me the doctor said because they said well, how long is this going to last? He says T-cells are the gift that keeps on giving. Once they're in your system, they should continue running the course. If they don't, then we'll go to another level. Like I said, since 2023, no chemotherapy I've been feeling well. I have days when I'm off a little bit. I have part where my cognitive dissonance gets jacked up because of the cancer. Yeah, the medication and the cancer, sure, but other than that, I'm starting to become myself again. I've not been that since I was sick. I have this energy. You wake up tired, you go to sleep tired, I can sleep for five hours or I can sleep for eight or 10. I still feel fatigued and that's just something I got to deal with.
Larry Zilliox:Yeah, let's talk a little bit about how critical funding is for this type of research. I mean, is it done at NIH or is it done at a university and funded by NIH?
Jeffrey Sapp:It's done at a university. It's funded, I think, by the private sector and NIH. I would assume I wasn't interested at that level, but the university and I forget the doctor's name that came up with this they came up with the CAR T therapy. They ran it through. Fda got approved to do the clinical trial. Now they do CAR T therapy for at least three types of leukemia, plasma cell leukemia being one of them. So they kind of ran the whole show and I think the money was part government, part private sector. Bristol-myers Squibb was the folks that kind of stepped up to the plate for me On the pharmaceutical side.
Larry Zilliox:Yes, sir, yeah.
Jeffrey Sapp:Yes sir.
Larry Zilliox:Well, clearly this type of long-term research can't take place unless it's subsidized. I mean, it can be subsidized for a while by corporations and maybe universities, but without government funding it's eventually going to dry up, and part of the problem there is that when research goes away, so do research scientists.
Jeffrey Sapp:Absolutely.
Larry Zilliox:And then they end up going to work in maybe Canada or Switzerland or other countries that are opening their doors and making moving there very easy, because they value knowledge and expertise, and it's a drain on this country to see research end and research scientists leave. What's the best way for our listeners to alert their elected officials that this type of cancer research and all cancer research really needs to continue to be funded?
Jeffrey Sapp:Before I ask that, let me tell you one thing about the funding, why it's so critical. Based on who you talk to, my treatment was $450,000. And you don't find that laying around. I was at the hospital for after the treatment for 10 days and a half, for 30 days, coming back in Quite a bit expensive to it and without that money I wouldn't have been able to go through what I went through.
Larry Zilliox:Well, insurance is not going to pick that up.
Jeffrey Sapp:Oh, hell, heck. No, no, I didn't with it, but that's why this funding is critical. It's also the research. You got to keep the research going because you don't just wake up one day and say, aha, I have a solution. They kind of build on it, build on it, build on it and I'm living proof of that and when they got something like the carotid cell therapy, they apply it and it starts to work. Now they've got to improve that, because the cancer is never going to go away. That's a fact.
Jeffrey Sapp:For someone who is interested in wanting to be an advocate, to learn more or to be engaged is number one learn a little bit about cancer. I was one of those guys. I would never do cancer. I wouldn't talk with anyone who had cancer, you know, it's just. I felt awkward. You know, I had a certain image in my mind and so I did not understand anything about it. Once you understand just a little bit about it I'm not talking about writing a thesis, just a little bit about it do a Google search. You can understand the setting, the context. After you do that, I would say read my paper.
Jeffrey Sapp:My paper on the CAR-T or the cancer didn't kill me, but these funding cuts might, because in there I talk specifically about the risk that were taken when they cut funding. When you cut funding for someone who has cancer, it's like taking a life vest off of someone who is drowning and calling it budget reform Absolutely goofy. How in the heck they can do that? So people who come behind me are less likely to be treated like I was if there's no funding for it. So people die. So legislators, basically, are making life and death decisions on who lives and who dies, when all along all we got to do is just fund that. Keep it going, keep the scientists going, keep them in America where we need them, keep fighting for a cure. And the one thing I found with the research scientists I talked to they get that cure and they're working on it, but then they start working on something, a spinoff from it, and thank God they did, because they found another way to combat the leukemia.
Larry Zilliox:Well, september is Leukemia Awareness Month and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to do this and get it right out there at the beginning of the month and say I would bet for most of our listeners they know someone who has cancer, someone in their family or someone they work with or go to church with. And I will have a link to Jeffrey's paper in the show notes and I encourage everybody to read that because I think all too often we'd say, okay, you know, and so-and-so has cancer. We'd say, okay, you know, so-and-so has cancer. Oh, that's terrible, but we really don't know much about that journey and which is so important for people to understand so that they can put a face and a story to the need to fund cancer research. It's not going to go away, like you say, and when you have a clinical trial clinical trials are based on safety the whole idea with a medicine and to prove it that it works and that it's safe and the way that it they determine that it's safe is look at the data. And if you have a data and then all of a sudden there's a break and it just stops, then it it's almost useless in that sense if you pick it up in a couple of years. You almost have to start over, and so it's vital that the research for leukemia and all the different types of cancers continue out there.
Larry Zilliox:So, listeners, I encourage everybody to talk to people that you know, that have made that journey you know.
Larry Zilliox:Ask them to tell you what it was like what, what it was like to get that diagnosis, what it was like to go through the treatment not only the medical aspect, but the insurance aspect, the Medicare aspect, the VA aspect.
Larry Zilliox:If they are a veteran and we know that there are a lot of veterans that have cancer and cancer-related illnesses from their time in service you, especially the type of work that you did in the Navy, exposed you to something that in all likelihood, impacted your medical condition.
Larry Zilliox:But then there are veterans out there who were exposed to Agent Orange, to burn pits, to all sorts of JP4 and chemicals related to their job, whether it's solvents working on refinishing aircraft or whether it's the fuel that goes in the aircraft. Service members are around all sorts of chemicals and all sorts of things that, if not monitored properly and protected against they, can really affect their health. So ask somebody that you know, a friend or a relative, to tell you their story and you would be surprised, you're not. You're not asking them to do something that is going to cause them to go into you know to, to bring up their cancer again and all of a sudden they're going to have it. It doesn't work like that and most people, I think, would be happy to sit down and tell you about their story and to say you know I'm glad you're interested in, because being an advocate for cancer research is a very good thing.
Jeffrey Sapp:You got to finesse it. You're absolutely correct. Everything you say is spot on. But what I discovered people like me, a lot of folks who have cancer or find it, don't want to talk about it because they think they did something wrong. Like when they told me I had it, I was embarrassed, I didn't want to tell anyone. My God, I did something wrong with it. And I found out. There's a lot of people out there that are kind of hesitant. Also, what I found because I'm a big advocate of communicating. I think if we communicate with each other, we learn something. We learn something. We raise the bar of excellence, if you will.
Jeffrey Sapp:When I talk with someone and I say, well, I'm fighting cancer, oh, you do. And then, oh, my dog, my cat, my wife, my friend, my wife, my buddy, he has cancer, and we'll go on and on and on. I kid you, not every single time, probably about 50 times when I talk with people, it's related to cancer. Then you get into it and they get comfortable talking with it, and then they get more comfortable approaching someone who has it, because everyone's concerned. What do I say? What don't I say? How can I be of assistance? And all, having someone just tell their story, you know, I think is a very good way if it helped them navigate from where they are to where they've been and appreciate the whole process. But talking, you're right, talking with people, getting them talking, people who don't have cancer, being mindful of it. That's why I say learn something about it. If you want to get specific, learn something about CAR T-cell therapy.
Larry Zilliox:And then when you talk with someone, you have a better baseline to discuss with. I think when you want to talk to somebody about their cancer journey, I think really the key is to explain to them your interest is in learning more about it so that you can be an advocate. It's not just that you want to fill some time by hearing a story and say, well, you know there, but for the grace of God, go. I, you know, it's not that. It's not about that. It's about educating me about what you went through.
Larry Zilliox:Because when, when you want to have that conversation with a congressperson or a representative or somebody, you want to be able to talk to them not only about medication, about the nature of the illness, about the prevalence of the illness, but also about insurance, about VA care and coverage, so all sorts of different aspects. When you only talk to them about one thing, that gives them a chance to ignore a lot. And so, yeah, I'm a big advocate of just listening to people and say you know, tell me your story, what happened, and you know where are you at now and what can we do to make things better for you. That's what I'm saying. How can I help?
Jeffrey Sapp:Yeah, for sure, how can I?
Larry Zilliox:help. Sure Well, listen, jeffrey. I can't thank you enough for sitting down with me and telling your story, and this is a perfect episode to start off Leukemia Awareness Month, so I really appreciate it.
Jeffrey Sapp:Absolutely. One last note I just discovered I now have prostate cancer. Absolutely One last note I just discovered I now have prostate cancer, went into MRI CT scan and it's like Lord, give me a break. So we got the CAR T, we got the leukemia pretty much where we're tracking it, and now we got to deal with this too. It's going to turn out okay. Yeah, never give up, never surrender.
Larry Zilliox:Yeah, that's my battle cry, for sure. Well, we wish you all the best. Okay, good luck. Thank you, larry. Well, listeners, we'll have another episode for you next Monday morning at 0500. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms. We're on YouTube and.
