The bone marrow transplant folks at Dana Farber have identified 8 records that look like good matches in the bone marrow database of 8 million. This is encouraging since we found no matches two years ago. It seems that for a person with a Scots-Irish background, I have unusual elements in my HLA. These elements may be a legacy of my Native American great grandmother or who knows what in my lineage. But thanks to millions more people in the database, we are now finding matches even for hybrids like me.
Dana Farber is now contacting those “matches” to see which are real, living people willing to donate stem cells. People who are willing and able to donate stem cells will then need to have blood samples sent to Boston for re-testing. The person who is a match will have to get injections for a week and then have those stem cells "harvested." For a more detailed description of the process, see the link below.
http://www.marrow.org/DONOR/steps_of_donation.html
The minimum time from now until we would have stem cells from a "live" donor is 4 weeks. 8 weeks is more likely and 3 months is possible.
If we are able to find and get stem cells from an appropriate person, I will be able to have what is called an allogenic transplant. For this, I will go into the hospital for a mild regiment of chemo (four days) followed by a stem cell injection. I could then come home (total in hospital could be 9-14 days). After injection, the healthy donor stem cells then begin a battle of cells inside me, which hopefully results in the donor cells killing off my marrow and replacing it. It will be several months for my immune system to rebuild completely. All of this could be less strenuous than the massive doses of chemo I had before.
And of course all of this depends on turning one of those database matches into a "live donor." If we can't find that willing person, then there is almost a 100% probability of a match in the cord blood bank. However, it takes longer to recover from a transplant using cord blood; it will be better if we find that so-called live donor.
Daniel and I feel quite optimistic about this route.
Once again we find ourselves in a situation in which we are blessed with the Amazing Medical Science Machine. As fantastic as medicine was three years ago, it has made giant strides since then. This whole route of “mini-transplant” was only experimental then. The databases are bigger; the drugs are better; the doctors more experienced.
You may have heard me describe how I understand the nature of “miracle” or divine action in our world. Theologists would call it a “non-interventionist” perspective; that is, a view that divine action does not require God to intervene beyond natural law. Instead, I believe that God created us and everything that is, and because of this, God acts through God’s creation, with improbable acts which nonetheless have natural causes. The miracle is in how we share the blessings of our improbable outcomes.
We are here again face-to-face with the Miraculous. Life for me now is unlikely. But then, as any evolutionary biologist would say, ALL life is unlikely. And here we all are.
If you want to read more about stem cell transplant and how you might get listed as a potential donor, see this website.
http://www.marrow.org/ or http://www.marrow.org/HELP/join_the_registry.html
Every “live donor” increases the potential life for another. That is a miracle.
The crying need is for non-white donors. Native Americans who have my condition have very little possibility of finding a donor. I understand this situation results from two problems: that there are so few in the gene pool and that there is a low percentage of donors among the relatively few Native Americans. Hawaiians similarly have a very small donor pool. The situation is only slightly better for Afro-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans. Anything you can do to be an agent of the Miraculous by getting registered and by encouraging others to register, especially in those under-represented groups, will add life to the world.
Bonnie,
It was great to see you today and say hi for even a minute. " Was it today or yesterday?" I ask myself as I type this, because it's been so busy. All the more meaningful and lovely was your warm smile when I saw you briefly today at Wright Hall.
Susan and I will continue to keep you in our prayers, and thanks for taking the effort to reach out to the community to let us know what's going on and how you're doing.
God bless, and hang in there!
Michael
Posted by: Michael Ryan | December 13, 2005 at 06:57 PM