In January 1995, I sauntered into a Michigan doctor's office to get the results of some tests I had taken to find the cause of my back pain. The doctor informed me that I had a terminal form of leukemia called chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). He said I had three years to live.

After my diagnosis, everything happened in slow motion. A 37-year-old major in the U.S. Army, I had a wife and a 5-year-old daughter. I immediately calculated...