Blood Marrow Donation: Final Entry

Today I found out that my blood brother died.  I never met him.

It began, for me, back in 2000, when I registered with the National Marrow Donors Program to see if I could be a match for a co-worker whose daughter had cancer.  I wasn't a match.  But seven years later I was a match for someone else.  They called me up out of the blue and asked if I still wanted to be a donor. Of course I did, I told them, I had to blog about something.

So in 2007 I wrote about going through the preliminary procedures.  In 2008 I wrote about the process of peripheral stem cell donation, which was the type I underwent. You can read them all here, I recommend them. I was funnier back then.  I also wrote about my great half-uncle who won the Nobel Prize in medicine for developing this very type of transplantation to treat leukemia (really). Then in 2009 I wrote about receiving a hand-written letter from a man named Lee.

Lee was in his sixties, had a wife and kids, and he had been the recipient of my marrow donation.  The letter included pictures of him drinking coffee and being with his dog. He was a real person after all.  In his letter he called me a hero. His wife and daughter also included letters and they called me a hero too. "Hero" seems like such an exaggeration.  "Nice" maybe, but not "hero."  I somehow felt like I had deceived them into thinking I was someone else, or that it was a case of mistaken identity that I was impolitely refusing to correct. He also called me his blood brother, which touched me.  He didn't have to say that, but he did.  Unlike "hero" which has objective standards, "blood brother" said to me that I was important to him, personally.

[A picture of my dog to prove I am a real person after all too.]

When I looked through my mail today I saw another letter from Washington state.  I know very few people who live there, so somehow I knew what it was without opening it.  It was from Lee's widow.  She told me of his recent and peaceful death. It was a death that had been postponed a few years by this procedure, but eventually had come nonetheless. She wanted me to know. She said to me "You, Brian, will forever be in my heart and prayers."  That touched me.  The way she inserted my name in that sentence like that. It was personal.   To her, anyway, I was a real person after all too.

Surprise Letter in the Mail Today

I was writing on the computer this afternoon when The M dropped a fat letter in front of me. It was hand-addressed from someone whose name I didn't recognize. Washington state? I only know two people that live in that whole state, and their last name is the same as mine. As I opened it, curious and skeptical of it's contents, I remembered another hand written letter I got from some conspiracy group from, where else, San Francisco. I still don't know how those nuts found me. The Internet, I suppose. And because I watch too many FBI shows, I also had the thought that it could be a letter bomb. Really, I had that thought. Don't judge me.

To my surprise and delight it was a letter from Lee, the man who received my blood marrow stem cell donation about two years ago. We had been kept anonymous by the National Marrow Donors Network that had matched our blood tissue types way back when. But after a period of isolation, they allow donors and recipients to get each others contact information. I remember filling out a form and mailing it to the Network, but I never heard anything else about it... until this afternoon.

Lee has three grown children, the oldest of which is a year older than me. One of his daughters and his wife also wrote letters and included them in the envelope, along with a bunch of pictures. They were all very grateful, which made me feel rather strange. While I'm sure their gratitude is genuine, I don't feel like I deserve it. Lee called me a hero. I don't feel like a hero. I'm just a guy that got a bunch of shots and made a few extra trips to Dallas. Heck, the Network bought my meals and put me in a hotel. I think I got a pretty good deal.

He called me his blood brother. That phrase struck me. It is true, literally, since the procedure. All his marrow was killed by a massive dose of chemo, and then they implanted my blood marrow stem cells in his bones. Pretty soon they took root (or whatever) and his body started making my blood in its bones. Far out, eh? Now his body has one set of DNA, but his blood has my DNA. Hope he doesn't commit any serious crimes.

Still, it did make me feel good that Lee called me a hero, even though I don't feel like it applies. At least he thinks I am. He and The M too. Maybe all we need is someone, or perhaps a handful of folks, to really think we are something special. They may be delusional, but at least they're happy in their delusion. I'm alright being the hero of someone else's delusion.

Don't think this post is meant to be false humility or a pitiful attempt at fishing for kudos from the blogosphere. It's not that. It's me just trying to capture my emotional response to an unusual letter in the mail. Er... that's it.

Marrow Donation Part 7

Well I don't want to brag, but I'm going to anyway. I'm proud of someone in my family, my half-great uncle. Not that he's only half great. You'll understand if you stay with me. So pour yourself a cup of coffee, relax, and join me on a brief journey back through time. It went something like this:

Nearly 100 years ago, my great grandmother died of TB leaving my great-grandfather, Edward Thomas, a widower and father of two girls. He was a country doctor in Prairie Hill, Texas, not far from where I now live. Edward remarried and had a son in 1920, E. Donnal Thomas, my half-great uncle. Or maybe my great half-uncle. At any rate, my grandmother was his big half-sister. She always called him Skike.

As Donnall (Don) grew up, he would drive his father on late-night house calls in the family model-T, watching his father practice medicine and save lives. Don decided early in life that he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and practice medicine.

Now, fast forward to 1942. Don is married to Dottie and starting Harvard Medical School. In 1955 they, together, began to research transplantation. (For more info see a great story here.) At that time, the medical community thought transplantation was doomed to failure and he was considered a bit of a quack! In 1963 they moved to Seattle to build a team of researchers that saught to develop bone marrow transplantation as a cure for leukemia. This team is still in existence, and at present has trained the vast majority of bone marrow transplantation physicians in the world. I can remember my grandmother telling me about his work when I was a young child in the 1970's. It's funny, but it didn't really impress me much back then.

Then, while I was in graduate school, we all found out that he won the 1990 Nobel Prize for Medicine! I was suddenly very impressed indeed. He told my grandmother when he heard the news, that "The only thing I hate, is that Daddy's not here to see me get it. I owe so much to him" refering to his father, the country doctor.

So it is with a special satisfaction that I complete my marrow donation. Although I don't really know my half-great uncle, I may have to write him and let him know I have been up to lately. After all, we look a lot alike!

Marrow Donation Part 6

I finished my donation activities today - now we just have to sit and wait to see if the patient responds well. This type of transplant has a 50/50 chance. Not to minimize the seriousness of his condition, but I felt the need to celebrate with another poem, this time, a limerick.

Donation: Middle-Aged Fat Guy

For hours, made on his back lie

His blood has the goods

To shouldn't the shoulds

To blue the otherwise black sky

Frankly, I'm quite impressed with myself, but then again, that doesn't take much. I again invite all three of my readers to post their own (clean) limerick on the topics of cancer, blogging, or what ever strikes your fancy.

Marrow Donation Part 5

This morning I began my stem cell harvest. After 10 shots of "G" to stimulate the stem cell production in my blood marrow, it was finally time to collect them. They hooked me up to a modified platelet collection machine that took blood out of my left arm and put it back in my right arm. Between the comzouta and the guzinta the blood went through a centrifuge gizmo that collected the stem cells. I produced nearly 400 mL of "product" as they call it, and I posed for a picture with the bag o' blood. I'll post the photo when I get a copy.

Laying on my back for four hours during the collection was the hardest part. My butt was sore and my arm hurt from holding it in one position for so long. The also gave me an anti-coagulant drug to keep my blood from clogging up the machine. But this drug binds to the calcium in my blood stream which has the effect of making me feel "tingly" in my face and arms. When I got up I was dizzy for about 15 minutes.

The net effect of all this was to put me in a bad mood. In fact, I was grumpy. But as I lay there the last half hour, anxiously awaiting for it to be over, I was reminded of a verse from the Old Testament book of Isaiah:

"But he was pierced for our transgressions...

And by his wounds we are healed." ISAIAH 53:5

This verse describes, centuries before the birth of Jesus, how Christ's suffering and death was for us to be healed, for us to be reconciled to God, and for us to be forgiven. It seemed to me that God was reminding me of his sacrifice for me, and encouraging me that I could "share in his sufferings" in a little way, in order to help someone else be healed. May it be.

Marrow Donation Part 4

I am in Dallas tonight, staying at the Hotel Indigo. It's hip and swanky. M and I are enjoying some date time and just finished a great dinner of crab cakes and steak. Tomorrow I get hooked up to the machine that pulls the stem cells out of my blood stream. I have had some headaches and backaches from the shots and a little fatigue. But other than that it has been relatively painless. In celebration, I have decided to write a Marrow Donation Haiku:

A dude has cancer
Shots make my bone marrow ache
It's good blog fodder

What do you think? Is it a masterpiece? Please post your own Haiku about bone marrow, cancer, blogging, or what ever you want. Or, if you prefer, write me a limerick instead. I'm bilingual.

Marrow Donation Part 2

What do a sixty-something man with multiple myeloma and middle-aged fat guy have in common? Soon they will have the same blood!

Today I began the series of shots for my marrow donation. Technically, it's a peripheral blood stem cell transplant. If the shots work, my bones will work overtime to produce stem cells to such an extent that they will spill into my bloodstream. Next week they will be extracted and flown to an undisclosed city where the patient lives. He will be receiving a large dose of chemotherapy that will kill his own blood marrow and the cancer. Then he receives my stem cells and his body starts producing new blood with them. No problemo.

The drug name is called Neupogen, but insiders call it by the slang name "G". Today I received 4 mL of G, two in each arm. They say I will likely experience some bone pain, but so far I don't feel anything. My dosage is large, they say, on account of me being large.

You, too, can sign up to be on the National Marrow Donors database and perhaps save someone's life.

Marrow Donation Part 1

Eight or ten years ago I worked with a lady whose daughter had cancer and needed a blood marrow donation. In effort to find a suitable match for her daughter, she organized a company-wide blood drive and match testing program with the National Marrow Donor Program. I was not a match for her daughter and after that company closed down we went our separate ways.

Then, last year, I got a call telling me that my records were in their database and had been found to match a man with a type of lymphoma that could be treated in this way. Was I interested? Sure. But later my patient developed complications and the transplant didn't occur.

But last week they called again and we are back on track! So today I had a physical where a doctor confirmed that I was indeed a middle-aged fat guy with blood marrow. They did an EKG which was painless until the tape ripped some chest hairs out! The doc was sure surprised when my chest x-ray showed a rare Rogaine-producing internal organ, but it finally accounted for my general state of hairiness which had puzzled the medical community for so long.

After the new year, the plan is for me to get a series of shots that makes my marrow go into overdrive and produce an abundance of stem cells. These are then sifted by pouring all my blood through a very small kitchen strainer and then the patient gets them by mixing them with left-over holiday eggnog and swigging it down with a flourish of machismo. Something like that. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details.