Bottom Line Changes for Ogden

For Gregg Ogden, the bottom line had always been the company’s sales figures at the end of the day. When he began to square off with death, Ogden searched for a more significant bottom line.

Today, Ogden’s rare disease — T-cell leukemia — is in remission. And while his bout has left the president of the world’s largest sports-calendar business scarred, he has refocused his approach to everything including his family, his business, his body and even his golf game. Looking death in the eye has put sales figures in perspective.

“I’ve not necessarily slowed down,” he said. “I actually think I’m as or more effective business-wise. But not everything has to be a pressure-cooker.”

Ogden’s trials and tribulations over the last two years were tough enough to wear most people down. But today, he’s back at the office pushing his team of about 230 employees in hopes of reaching a record $20 million in sales for 2002.

Last year, despite a nightmarish September following the terrorist attacks on the United States, AWA had almost $17 million in sales.

And that was with Ogden becoming a frequent flier from Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport (XNA) to LaGuardia in New York City for treatment.

A panel of independent judges selected Ogden as the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 2001 Business Executive of the Year. His firm, Athletic World Advertising, was then selected as Arkansas Business’ 2001 statewide Business of the Year in its category.

Accolades have become commonplace for Ogden, but rumors regarding his health have circled around the water cooler, too.

Hardly a common cold

In the early fall of 2000, Ogden began feeling run down. He was catching colds often. He believed since he was approaching 40, it was perhaps normal to feel run down at times. He would get antibiotics for his colds and move on.

He finally asked for a complete physical and was told everything looked fine, with the exception of a low white blood cell count. It shouldn’t be that major of a concern, Ogden was told, but he may want to keep an eye on it.

As 2001 arrived, Ogden’s low energy level dipped farther.

“It took longer for me to get going in the morning, but I’d always get through it,” he recalled. “I started having headaches quite a bit. I went back [to the doctor] and said I wanted to find out what’s going on with the low white count.”

What was going on was his white blood cells, which fight infection in the body, had become even fewer.

As a precautionary measure, the Highlands Oncology Group in Fayetteville took a bone sample from Ogden to study. It was sent to Little Rock, and when the report came back, there were more questions than ever.

“Everyone was stumped,” Ogden said. “No one was sure what to make of it. That’s the thing that was frustrating to me. I had experts in their field that wanted to help me, but this is such a complicated disease that they didn’t know what to think of it. The report just said it was a type of blood disorder. So I just went back to what I was doing before — going along. But that was the first time I thought something may be wrong. I still didn’t think it was serious.”

Catching colds was a task Ogden had perfected.

“If somebody would sneeze in the same room, I’d catch a cold,” he said.

That spring, Ogden became even more fatigued. When the headaches increased in August, he wanted to do everything in his power to get to the bottom of his health problems. He discovered that things were a bit more serious now as his red blood cell count was dropping, too.

The yet-to-be diagnosed rare form of leukemia had suppressed Ogden’s white blood cell count in the beginning, but as it spread it also attacked the red cells.

Ogden was told about Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and Dr. Charlotte Cunningham-Rundles, director of the hospital’s immunodeficiency program. Chosen by New York Magazine as one of “New York’s Best Doctors,” she specialized in blood disorders.

I got on the fast track to see her,” Ogden said. “And that was a miracle because I called on a Thursday, and she had an opening the next Monday.”

Ogden planned to fly out of XNA that Sunday, but as Sunday came, so did a pain that Ogden had never felt before. He could hardly move. His mother, a brother and his girlfriend were driving him to the airport, and small bumps in the road ignited fireworks of pain throughout his body.

“I hurt so bad,” he said.

The drop in red blood cells had caused Ogden to lose oxygen.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “I could hear my heart pumping. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I was about to pass out.”

Ogden called one of his golfing friends, Dr. Scott Bailey, chief of staff at Willow Creek Women’s Hospital in Johnson, and told him the pain was too great to make it to XNA. Bailey had Ogden stop by, and he gave him anti-nausea and pain reliever shots.

Ogden and his girlfriend, Mari See, finally made it to New York’s Plaza Hotel. But the next morning, it took almost two hours for Ogden to get dressed for his appointment. He could hardly sit up in bed.

“I was having to fight the whole time,” he said. “That’s the most I’ve ever had to fight. I could not have made it without Mari.”

Ogden had to ask a bellman to stop several times while being wheeled to a cab. The vibrations of the wheelchair were causing too much pain.

Ogden’s face had taken on a grayish hue, and his eyes were a perfect white with no blood vessels in sight.

Dr. Cunningham-Rundles thought she was just going to have an office visit for consultation with Ogden. When she arrived, she took one look at him and realized she had a severely anemic patient. His red blood cells had dropped to less than half the normal count. She admitted Ogden to Mount Sinai, and within an hour he was receiving a blood transfusion.

“After the first two hours, I started feeling good,” he said. “After about four hours, it was the best I’d felt in months.”

Multiple tests performed on Ogden were still inconclusive. He left Mount Sinai after a week feeling “great.”

He was told that the red cells he’d received in the transfusion would last only about a month.

“Sure enough, after about three or four weeks I started getting gray in the face again and getting headaches,” Ogden said.

This time he stayed in town for his blood transfusion from Highlands Oncology. Again, he felt good and returned to work. He only told AWA Vice President Mark McQueen of his situation.

The transfusions were working like a Band-Aid until he would become very ill again. It allowed him to stay around the office, except for another Mount Sinai visit in August. This would be a continual cycle throughout the rest of the summer.

September from hell

September rolled around, and Ogden felt worse than ever. It was time to try something new. On Sept. 10, a method to boost his red cell count made him extremely sick. The next morning, while ill in bed at home, he got a call from a friend telling him to turn on the television. He would watch New York’s World Trade Center twin towers collapse following the terrorist attacks.

“I had just left New York a couple of weeks before,” he said.

Following another transfusion in late September, Ogden’s “up time” was a mere two days before the pain returned.

This time, Dr. Kevin Troy, a hematologist at Mount Sinai, wanted to remove Ogden’s spleen. He believed Ogden’s spleen, which normally filters the body’s blood, was causing the loss of good cells.

The procedure was a major operation. Ogden’s white cell count dipped to practically zero. Had the slightest infection occurred, it could have proved fatal.

“I asked if I had cancer, even leukemia, and they flat-out told me ‘no,'” Ogden recalled. “I was so sore. I have this large scar, and I had these big staples in me. But I thought it would fix me. It was a great hospital.”

The two October weeks Ogden spent in bed recuperating from the surgery gave him time to reconsider his priorities.

“I had a chance to really start thinking about things,” he said. “Before the operation, my main drive was selling schools and selling ads. I’m a real detailed person. I’d go to bed thinking what I could have done that day, and I’d wake up thinking what I could do that day. Now I have a different approach.”

After he healed from the spleen removal, Ogden felt good again.

“In my mind, I had solved the problem,” he said.

He was released from Mount Sinai at 3 p.m. and caught a 5 p.m. flight to Fayetteville. He returned to work the next day with the staples still inside him.

But mid-November came, and the pain returned. He went back for another transfusion. His red and white cell counts were low again.

“That was frustrating because I thought I had gotten to the bottom of this,” he said.

Ogden began searching for advice from others, even those outside the medical community. He called Pastor H.D. McCarty of University Baptist Church in Fayetteville.

“[McCarty] told me to talk with my family and drop everything and get to the bottom of this thing,” Ogden said. “Every person I saw wanted to do the best they could to help me. But at the end of the day, they’re punching clocks. You’ve got to be the person that pushes yourself at the end of the day.”

The bottom line

Ogden had spent time working in Atlanta in the early 1990s before returning to his hometown of Fayetteville. While there, he had become friends with a manager at Merrill Lynch. They remained in contact, and several times during their talks the friend kept telling Ogden that his case sounded similar to the symptoms experienced during the mid-1980s by another friend. And that man was a Wall Street broker who was given six months to live.

The broker had even told his wife of his expected demise. But a Dr. Golde at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York cured the man, who is still alive today.

In January, Ogden called Sloan-Kettering and discovered that Dr. David Golde was now physician-in-chief there. Ogden was informed that Golde saw very few patients anymore. But Ogden was persistent and said he was coming to New York for a visit at Mount Sinai the following Monday. Golde agreed to see Ogden on Tuesday.

At Sloan-Kettering, even the most experienced physicians work in threes. They read reports and converse. After such a visit, Golde met with Ogden.

Ogden recalled, “Dr. Golde walked in, sat down and said, ‘Well, you’ve been through a lot. You’ve had transfusions, had your spleen removed. I guess you’re ready to get to the bottom of it.’ I said, ‘Yes sir. I am.’ He said, ‘Well, you’ve got leukemia. There’s no cure for it, but I think I can help you.’

“That was the first time anyone had said that to me. And he was staring me right in the eye. I was actually relieved.”

Golde wanted to begin chemotherapy right away.

“I asked him what he meant by right away, and he said, ‘I mean as in right now,'” Ogden said. “I wanted to go home for at least a week, and he told me that was fine. I needed to get things mapped out and get stuff taken care of. I sat down with Mark and we got things on cruise control at the office. I had some life insurance issues, so I met with my attorney Greg Jones and got my will in order. I wanted to tie up all my loose ends so I could concentrate on nothing but getting well. The fight is as much mentally as it is physically.”

While back in Fayetteville, Ogden decided it was time to let his employees hear the truth about their boss.

“Rumors were going around the office,” he said. “I had a morning meeting where I addressed the whole company. I told them that I considered anything of a medical issue with an employee to be of a personal matter. But because I’m in this position, I told them they had the right to know. I said, ‘The good news is that they have pinpointed what the problem is and I’m on the road to recovery. It is totally treatable.’ I told them the downside was that I would be out of the office for a few weeks. I said I didn’t want any cards or flowers, just their thoughts and prayers. Then I went on to business issues.”

He returned to Sloan-Kettering for his first chemo treatment wearing a suit and tie. He brought his children: daughter Audra, 16, and son Blake, 13. Mari, who was with him “the whole time,” was also there.

As he walked through the halls of Sloan-Kettering, Ogden said his heart broke for all of the cancer patients.

“That’s one of the hardest things to deal with,” he said. “Some were in a lot worse shape than me.”

It was late January when Ogden received his first treatment. Chemotherapy kills abnormal cells, but his count was so low that the treatment was a risk. Any fever during the treatment could cause an infection.

He returned to the Plaza Hotel with his children and Mari. Ogden especially liked his view overlooking Central Park.

The first several days passed without incident. But at 4 a.m. on the seventh day, Ogden awoke “soaking wet.” He walked down to the lobby without waking the children and took a cab to the hospital. His fever was so high everything seemed “like a fog.”

He was admitted immediately. At this critical point, if he caught a cold, pneumonia could set in and Ogden’s body likely could not have fought it off. He remained in the hospital for another week, getting a steady diet of intravenous antibiotics.

Honoring a friend

Following his third chemo treatment, Ogden’s body began producing its own red and white cells.

“That was huge,” Ogden said. “Dr. Golde told me I could not have responded better. He told me I was the ‘healthiest sick person he’d ever known.'”

Ogden had just received his fourth and last chemo treatment when he received the news of the death of lifelong friend Trent Trumbo of Fayetteville. Trumbo was killed March 26 in a one-vehicle accident, and Ogden thought he should attend Trumbo’s funeral.

“I had asked Dr. Golde if I could go, and he said, ‘No,'” Ogden said. “He still doesn’t know I came.”

A weakened Ogden was a pallbearer at Trumbo’s funeral. He also gave a tribute at the service. He immediately returned to New York.

While undergoing the four chemo treatments over a two-month period, Ogden was able to stay on top of things at AWA. McQueen set up a laptop computer to keep the company’s leader interactive with the Fayetteville office.

“I knew what was going on,” Ogden said. “I touched base every morning and got the sales totals every afternoon.

“With chemo, you don’t hardly sleep, so I would stay up all night and work.”

Ogden went back to Sloan-Kettering for a checkup July 15. His leukemia is now in remission. He will go again in September and knows that at some point he’ll have another chemo treatment.

“Gregg was seriously ill,” Golde said. “His personality and nature is such that he tends to minimize things, but he was very sick. Anything could have happened at anytime. He’s a great guy. When one of these things hits you, it’s tough. You’re on your own. You don’t know what to ask for. Not everyone is as fortunate as Gregg.”

Sidebar

Ogden Now Takes Care of More Than Business

Gregg Ogden didn’t have time for leukemia.

Dr. David Golde, the physician-in-chief of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, whom Ogden credits for saving his life, joked that his patient’s leukemia was now in remission because “Gregg is way too busy to have this disease right now.”

But while he hasn’t exactly slowed down, Ogden has filtered out many past routines in his daily schedule.

“What I want to do now is prevent this thing from coming back,” Ogden said.

Ogden was invited to a conference by Frank Broyles, the University of Arkansas’ men’s athletic director, who was recently diagnosed with prostrate cancer.

The conference made a big impact on Ogden.

“The guy there said your body always does what it knows to do,” Ogden said. “How your body heals itself is dictated by five things — what you eat, what you drink, how you exercise, how much rest you get and how you think. I was doing everything wrong except how I thought. I was sleeping four hours a night. And sometimes I would get so busy I would forget to eat lunch.”

Ogden has been more than just a leukemia patient during his trials. He’s become a student of the disease and his body.

“The body is an amazing orchestra,” he said. “I’ve spent my spare time researching this disease. The first thing I’ve had to set aside is golf. Now I have a different outlook spiritually.”

Ogden got much support from Broyles during the darkest of times fighting his cancer. And Broyles told Ogden about his own diagnosis a week before it became public knowledge.

“I knew that with [Broyles’] personality, he would fight it the way he fights everything else,” Ogden said. “He’s a stud. He so healthy. He’s a man’s man.

“I want to surround myself with positive people. And Coach [Broyles] is so positive. So was Dr. Golde.”

Broyles, 77, kept in touch with Ogden often as he traveled back and forth to New York battling the leukemia.

“It was of grave concern the way Gregg was feeling,” Broyles said. “He wasn’t getting any better until he got the proper diagnosis.

“Today, we share all of the technology and faults and progress and information we have about treatment. Both of us believe God has a strong influence on diseases. And we’re both working, trying to improve our diet.”

Ogden is hoping to have Golde as his guest in Fayetteville on Sept. 28 for the Arkansas-Alabama football game.

“Gregg is a pretty good patient, but he has a lot of interests,” Golde said. “When he’s feeling good he’s a busy guy. He’s going to need some long-term treatment. He’s feeling good now.”

Ogden agreed with Golde’s assessment.

“When you come through something like this, your biggest emotion is gratitude,” Ogden said. “And I’m so thankful.”