By A.K. Dugan, Lebanon Express writer | Posted: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 12:00 am
Andrew Rounds, Iraq vet, passed away Saturday
A Waterloo man who spent the last nine months battling leukemia died at Samaritan Regional Medical Center (SRMC) in Corvallis on Saturday.
Andrew Rounds, 22, was thought by doctors in January to have a sinus infection, until he was found lying on the floor of his parent's home, semi-conscious, on Jan. 24. He was taken to the Lebanon hospital, where bloodwork revealed that his white blood cell count was about 50 times the normal level.
Rounds was taken by Life Flight from Lebanon to Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) in Portland, where he was given several doses of chemotherapy. He also had surgery to remove some of his skull due to bleeds in his brain brought about by the leukemia. The surgery caused a small brain injury.
Since then he had been in and out of the Portland and Corvallis hospitals. He was matched for a bone marrow transplant that was to be done when he was strong enough, but doctors weren't able to get the leukemia into remission. Recently he had another round of chemotherapy.
The cause of his leukemia was unidentified. Because researchers found no genetic markers in his cells, it was not genetic but something environmental.
His family wonders whether the explosion of an ammunition depot in 2004, when he was serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq, could have exposed him to something that led to the disease. He was deployed to Kirkuk, Iraq for 14 months with the 1st and 62nd Air Support units out of Hawaii, and spent most of his time working security, escorting personnel and guarding the gates.
Friends and neighbors sponsored a number of fundraisers in the past several months to help the Rounds with medical and related costs.
He worked on a delivery truck for At Home Furniture of Albany between the time he returned from military service and his diagnosis.
His mother, Lisa Rounds, said the Oregon Health Plan covered him because he was a working adult when the leukemia was discovered.
“I'm so thankful for everything they've done," she said.
The family is grateful to the community for their support and prayers.
“To know there were people out here supporting him and thinking about him really helped him," she said. “He tried. He never gave up."
“I'm so thankful for all the care the nurses and and doctors [at Samaritan in Corvallis] gave to him, even the housekeeping crew," she added.
She encourages anyone with the kind of general and confusing symptoms Andrew had in January to get a complete blood count done. It would have revealed the leukemia a couple of weeks earlier, she said.
For additional information, see Rounds' obituary on page A9.