Montini football players huddle around teammate with leukemia

Hospital rooms aren't accommodating spaces for bulky teenage football players.

So when 35 members of the Montini Catholic High School Broncos visited Johnathan Weiger at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital last month, they had to do it in three shifts.

The state football champions were willing to put up with small inconveniences considering what their teammate had been going through the past several months.

Johnathan, 14, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of leukemia in late 2011. His doctors have managed to wrestle his disease into remission. But that won't last without intensive consolidation therapy.

So on April 25, just six days after his teammates visited, Johnathan received a stem cell transplant after undergoing high-dose chemotherapy and radiation therapy, which eradicated his bone marrow.

Now he faces an additional six to eight weeks in the hospital while cells repopulate his bone marrow and rebuild his immune system. After that, he will spend 100 days in isolation at home - admittedly a lousy way for a teenager to spend the summer.

But he hopes to be back at school and, with luck, getting back in shape for football by the fall.

At Montini, where the varsity team has been Class 5A state champions the past three years, Johnathan played center and long snapper for the freshman team. He completed the season, but in late October he began to feel tired and look pale.

A Nov. 2 trip from his home in Plainfield to a nearby emergency room led to a blood transfusion. That led to an appointment with Dr. Charles Rubin, a University of Chicago pediatric cancer specialist who sees patients at a clinic in Naperville.

Rubin knew all about the intensity of football at Montini. He had taken care of another student associated with the team and has worked with nurse practitioner Kelly Kramer, a Montini graduate and member of the school's athletics hall of fame.

The relationship between Montini and Comer Children's Hospital ran even deeper: The school was raising funds for cancer research at the hospital.

A series of tests on Johnathan led to a diagnosis of chronic myelogenous leukemia, or CML, a cancer of the white blood cells, rare in someone so young. Unfortunately, it was an aggressive form of CML and difficult to treat.

Johnathan stopped going to school.

He missed seeing the state championship game, where the team not only won, but scored a record 70 points. Instead, he began chemotherapy.

At that point, "we did not yet know what we were in for," recalled his mother, Fran.

Johnathan's disease moved quickly. Soon after Christmas it advanced to "blast crisis," a late stage of CML, with rapid progression and often short survival. He lost 20 pounds and was in and out of the hospital for therapy.

"Through it all he managed to keep up with his homework and maintain an A average," his mom said. "That keeps him happy."

Johnathan started a CaringBridge web page, which he uses as an outlet to help him cope with his disease and the side effects of his treatments. His family also set up a Johnathan Weiger benefit fund through BMO/Harris Bank.

"I had five days of chemo for two hours a day, and it just sucks!" he wrote on Feb. 29. "I threw up, couldn't eat and even the smell of things made me sick. And when I came home it didn't go away. … I just want to go back to my life. I miss school and my friends."

The medicines managed to get him into remission. But the next hurdle was a big one: finding a stem cell donor, a prerequisite for a transplant. No one in his family was an ideal match.

Family and friends helped organize drives to get more people tested, but no match was found. Finally, through an international bone marrow donor registry, he found a willing and compatible donor.

"Today, I found out that the donor my transplant team picked for me said YES!" Johnathan posted March 3. "This person is my lifesaver! I don't know if the donor is male or female, … how old they are or where they live. All I know is that my donor is very brave, unselfish and kind and will give me another chance for a healthy life! THANK YOU."

Dr. John Cunningham, professor of pediatrics at the University of Chicago and an authority on stem cell transplantation, said a matched unrelated donor can be just as good as a sibling donor.

"This approach gives us the best shot at a cure," he said.

With a donor lined up, Johnathan, his family and his doctors began preparing for the transplant. With help from his mom, plus "good stuff like candy and pizza," he regained 14 pounds.

Still, Johnathan was nervous about the transplant.

As the big day approached, Johnathan posted: "So much can go wrong. I can die. I don't really think of that a lot, but it's hard not to. … I am not looking forward to being in the hospital for six weeks, but I sure am looking forward to being healthy again!"

Little did he know that his teammates were about to deliver some spiritual restoration. Just before Johnathan was about to begin his pre-transplant radiation and chemotherapy sessions, a big yellow school bus rolled up outside of Comer Children's Hospital and 35 larger-than-average teenagers, accompanied by a coach or two, stepped out.

Kramer and Cunningham, who leads the pediatric cancer research program at the University of Chicago, knew they had to split them into three groups. One group toured Cunningham's research laboratory, the second group went to the pediatric cancer clinic and the third headed to see Johnathan.

Kramer kept the bustling pack of athletes focused and herded the first 12 into one elevator. She gave them the lecture about hand hygiene and led them to Johnathan's hospital room.

The moment they stepped in to see Johnathan, they clammed up. Johnathan, dressed like his visitors in a football jersey, did not look sick, despite being connected to two intravenous tubes. His room was filled with football stuff - pictures of the team, a Fighting Irish blanket - plus a poster of angels, just in case.

His classmates gradually loosened up and the conversation shifted to the bomb threat they had received at school and how half of the team immediately texted Johnathan about it, even though cellphones are not allowed in class.

During the next 90 minutes, all three groups trouped through. The noisiest were the freshman players, Johnathan's closest friends. They all provided him with candy and pizza, making him that much stronger to clear the upcoming hurdles.

The next day, his treatment team began the chemo and radiation regimen in preparation for the stem cell delivery, to be followed by at least six weeks in the hospital.

"It's a long, arduous process," Cunningham said, "but we have a good chance at beating this disease. We follow these patients for two years after a transplant. After that, he should be out of the woods. Dr. Rubin, Kelly Kramer and I plan to attend a Montini game when Johnathan is a junior and watch him play. I would prefer that to be a championship game."