Ted: Multiple Myeloma Survivor

Theodore “Ted” Hovey made a conscious decision while battling multiple myeloma that he would largely do it by himself. He went unaccompanied to his appointments – “I don’t want to have to entertain the person who’s there with me” – and took on the cancer one-on-one.

But from his visits to Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital, Ted, 59, who’s spent most of his working life in the marine industry, quickly learned that he wasn’t alone.

“These people at Yale become your family,” he said. “I can’t rave enough about how good the nurses are. And my doctor, Natalia Neparidze, saved my life in more ways than one. I read on internet a couple of times about people who beat cancer and they’re so glad to be over the treatment. I know what they mean, but I miss the people who were giving me that treatment.”

Ted, a single father of a 12-year-old baseball phenom named Grayson, has always been a physical guy, working as a sailmaker and a rigger in the marine industry before recently starting his own business, Bear Marine LLC near the Dockside Brewery in Milford. He was working at another marina in 2019 when he first felt a noticeable pain in his back.

“I had four guys working for me and I was always out leading the charge, but my back started hurting. I was slowing down and the guys were asking, ‘What’s wrong with you,’” Ted recalled. He saw a doctor, who advised him to go home, rest and return to work when he felt better.

“I went home and rested but I did not get better,” he said. He was in bed in his Milford apartment on a Monday around 4:00 a.m. when his back broke.

“My upper vertebrae broke and pushed into my spinal cord. I got into my car and somehow drove to Milford Hospital,” he said. Within 90 minutes, he was paralyzed from the waist down. He was transported to Yale New Haven, where Neurosurgeon Michael DiLuna, MD, FAANS, told him that if he wanted to walk again, he’d need immediate surgery. Doctors placed a titanium plate in his back and told him he had multiple myeloma.

He had to recover from the surgery – something the former competitive snow ski racer did largely on his own in the hospital before undergoing physical rehabilitation for about six months. Then the cancer treatment began.

“I had radiation every day for six weeks then you get chemo cocktails. It was uncomfortable but doable.” That was followed by stem cell transplant, which helped keep the myeloma at bay. His compromised immune system forced him to be secluded at the start of the COVID pandemic, but about halfway through it, he got depressed.

“This was one of the times that Dr. Neparidze helped save my life,” Ted said. “She helped me navigate it and gave me advice. From the beginning, Dr. Neparidze and I made decisions on course of treatment together. She would explain my options and what she thought was best, then I would say, let’s do this, and she would say, that sounds reasonable, so we would do that.”

Ted moved to Vermont with his sister, who helped him, and still made weekly or biweekly trips to Yale Cancer Center for treatment. Throughout his ordeal, he did not miss one appointment. Then he was enrolled in an immunotherapy clinical trial at Yale Cancer Center.

“It worked. I went from positive to a zero number,” he said. “They keep coming up with more ways to fight it.”

Although he says he’s only 50 percent of where he was physically, Ted is back snow skiing with his friends and considers himself extremely fortunate to live so close to Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center.

“I count my lucky stars, I really do. If someone came up to me said, ‘I have myeloma. Where should I go?’ I would tell them don’t go anywhere in the world other than Yale.”