- Keith Martin, a 59-year-old former DEA agent, is relishing his first Christmas with family in two years, after being in and out of the hospital for two years with serious health challenges
- After being diagnosed with lung cancer in late 2022, Martin underwent various treatments while grappling with complications such as blood clots, pneumonitis and congestive heart failure
- Despite these challenges, he remains positive and grateful, focusing on spending holiday quality time with his wife, Amy, their two daughters, Allie and Addison, and his supportive family
Keith Martin’s wife is treating him like a fragile ornament this holiday season after hospital trips consumed his last two Christmases.
“My wife told me I have to lay low until Christmas is over so I don’t get put into the hospital again,” Martin, 59, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview about his long health struggle. “She’s like, ‘Just don’t do anything around the house. Just relax, take it easy.’”
But Martin’s family is feeling optimistic after a new targeted therapy through the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio appears to be holding his stage 4 terminal lung cancer at bay after going after the deadly cells. The treatment, which goes beyond standard chemotherapy, uses multiple medications to target a specific mutation of the cancer.
“Terminal.’ That’s a scary word,” Martin’s oncologist Dr. Daniel Silbiger tells PEOPLE. “But being two years into a cancer journey, he’s actually in the best shape I’ve seen. I think this is a tremendous story of hope.”
No stranger to adversity in his life, Martin was 8 years old when he lost his 44-year-old mother, Shirley Martin, to breast cancer and leukemia. His dad, George Martin, was a trucker, so he was unable to provide daily care for them. His twin brother, Ken, and younger brother, Jim, then 4, all went to live at Milton Hershey School, a private boarding school in Hershey, Pa., designed for low-income families.
They were allowed to come home for two weeks at Christmas and a month during summer. “My dad made sure we had good Christmases,” Keith says. “We would make something in wood shop. It was always nice to take a wrapped gift home, even if it was junk. But he treated it like it was gold.”
He went on to graduate from Pennsylvania State University and earn a graduate degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, married his wife, Amy, 50, and had two daughters, Allie, 22, and 16-year-old Addison. He served almost 28 years with the Department of Justice in the Drug Enforcement Administration before retiring in 2021.
He then took on another job as a manager of investigations for a utility company. But on his way to his second career, he was waylaid by an unexpected illness.
On left, Keith Martin with wife Amy.
courtesy of Keith Martin
One morning in June 2021, Keith got out of bed and immediately thought he might have a blood clot in his left leg. However, he says he ignored it for a few days before going to have it checked out. The emergency room doctors confirmed his clot and put him on blood thinners. Then, in August, he developed another clot in his other leg despite being on medication.
Convinced he had gotten food poisoning after going out to eat with his brother and experiencing trouble breathing, he went to the hospital.
“I went to the emergency room and they scanned me and said I had a pulmonary embolism,” Martin says. That led to a quick trip to the hospital where he was seen by Dr. Silbiger, who told him they were going to do a biopsy for cancer.
On Dec. 23, 2022, during a snowstorm that kept his family from being with him, he was sitting alone when he was told by Silbiger that he had cancer and it had metastasized. “I held my composure thinking, ‘What do we do next?’” Martin says. “I had never smoked, but the scans showed I had lung cancer, probably stage 4. I could see the sadness, the empathy, in his face as he told me two days before Christmas.”
Although Martin was discharged that Christmas Eve, he did not know exactly what kind of cancer he had or where it had spread. It wasn’t until later that week when Silbiger confirmed he had non-small cell lung cancer, ALK-positive, which is a rare form of the disease.
ALK-positive cancer occurs in humans mostly as lung cancer, but it can also originate in many other parts of the body, including brain and breast. ALK-positive lung cancer occurs in approximately 5% of all lung cancer patients.
Keith Martin after radiation treatment with his supportive dog Barron, a mini labradoodle.
courtesy of Keith Martin
But it can be treated by targeted therapy. “The initial diagnosis was, obviously, shocking,” Silbiger says. “In Keith’s situation, it gave us a glimmer of hope that we did not have a traditional lung cancer, but one that offered [other] treatments.”
Unfortunately, the first targeted therapy had an unexpected side effect of causing pneumonitis in Keith’s lungs. “It was like either the cancer’s going to kill you or the pneumonitis, so they took me off the therapy,” he says.
His health began to decline dramatically. He was hospitalized in October 2023 and then, two days after Thanksgiving of that year, he was watching a college football game when he couldn’t breath. He told his wife he would go to the hospital after the game was over. “She knows I’m nuts,” he says.
When he got to the hospital, he knew it was bad. He had been on five liters of oxygen at home and now needed nine. He says he was hypoxic, had congestive heart failure and had a stroke. “It was the lowest point in my life,” he recalls. “I think [the doctors] thought that was it for me. Dr. Silbiger said I was a Christmas miracle.”
He spent last Christmas in the hospital, battling for his life. His tumors had gotten worse and his body was shutting down. Keith says that prior to his 2023 hospitalization, he was taking high-powered pain meds because the cancer had spread to his bones and abdomen.
“In September, the cancer was spreading and the chemo wasn’t working,” he says. “Being DEA, I said I’d never take oxycodone, but that was the level of pain I was in.”
So he was wary of what a new therapy, at the Cleveland Clinic, would bring. “This was really my last option for extending my life,” he says. “I was on it for three days and stopped taking the oxycodone. I told my wife it must be working because the pain went away.”
Not only the pain, but he was also largely weaned from oxygen — and his tumors began shrinking.
Through it all, he credits his friends and family for helping him navigate his disease, which has been responding to treatment although it is still considered terminal. “My wife is phenomenal, my kids, my brothers and great, great friends,” Keith says. “I’m truly blessed. I have no complaints.”
He will get a new scan in January and both he and Silbiger are optimistic about the findings that could extend his life for years.
No matter what, he tells his kids that he’s had a good life with no regrets. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve gotten to do things that many people wish they could have done,” he says. “That doesn’t mean I’m ready to die. It just means I’m grateful and appreciative.”
