Cathy Stone was tired in a way sleep couldn't fix. She found herself needing to rest in her car during her lunch hours as a commercial banker and taking naps as soon as she got home.

"It was even hard to type and focus,” she said.

Tests revealed that she had warm autoimmune hemolytic anemia, or warm AIHA. In simple terms, her immune system had turned against her own body, destroying the red blood cells that carry oxygen. The rare condition was leaving her drained and out of breath just climbing stairs.

Stone required multiple rounds of transfusions, which helped her feel better but didn’t provide a cure. Hematologist-oncologist Dr. Kavya Kannan of Novant Health Cancer Institute – Forsyth tried several standard treatments for warm AIHA, and while some helped briefly, the exhaustion kept coming back.

Kannan believed the problem lay in a different kind of white blood cells called plasma cells that were settling in Stone’s bone marrow, making destructive antibodies. She considered a different approach: a medication called Daratumumab, which is designed to treat multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells.

Soon after treatment began, Stone’s energy returned. Her schedule no longer revolved around lab appointments and transfusions, and she was no longer missing out on life because of exhaustion.

“Two weeks after the injection, I woke up and I said, ‘Wow. I really feel different now,’ Today, I come in and I’m 100%,” Stone said.

Before the treatment, “I could not plan to walk a lot, to go on a cruise, to go on an airplane. I just could not do it,” she said. “And today, I can.”