A daughter gets a rare chance to help give her father life –– and learns that African-American stem-cell donors are especially needed. WBUR commonhealth
to receive a weekly digest of WBUR’s best health, medicine and science coverage.My father had been diagnosed a few months ago with a potentially fatal leukemia, and it turned out my biology made me the best potential donor of the cells that could give him a better chance at survival.
Would it hurt? How would I feel afterwards? Would there be any lasting health effects? What about bruising or scarring from the needles used to extract my blood? And our timing was good. It used to be that for the best chance at a good outcome, these potentially life-saving transplants were limited to those who could find perfectly matched donors. But over the past decade or so,has advanced haploidentical, or"half-matched" transplants, making it easier for a patient's parent, sibling or child to become a donor.
Antin says a few years ago, it was estimated that bringing the number of African-American donors up to the level of other races would require 30 percent of the entire black population to join the donor registry — something he doubts will happen. But he says it's now clear that the key is not just having more donors — it's being able to do transplants with donors who are not as precise a match.No one saw my dad’s diagnosis coming.
In the days leading up to the donation, I began self-injecting twice-daily shots of a bone marrow stimulant drug. They triggered bearable bone pain and fatigue, making me feel stiff and sluggish. Tylenol helped., I donated via a process known as apheresis. This meant my blood was removed through a needle in one arm and filtered through a machine that collected my stem cells, which were eventually given to my dad. The remaining blood was returned to me through a needle in my other arm.
Deddi and I joke that this has been the reversal of my conception — I've helped to restore life to the man who helped give me life in the first place. But he's so much more than that.
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