Stem Cell Transplant saved life of Patients suffering from incurable diseases

Posted at December 21, 2009

The cancer that has riddled Jordyn Boucher’s blood since she was 15 months old is progressing.

Santa made a special trip to Brentwood last week so Jordyn’s family could celebrate Christmas before they traveled to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., where Jordyn will receive a bone marrow transplant from her father, Brian. Jordyn’s family is praying for a Christmas miracle. But for many other cancer patients, Jordyn was their miracle.

One of them is Cary Hill, a 39-year-old father of two from China Grove, N.C. Hill was never one to go to the doctor for anything. He fought what he thought were flu symptoms for more than a week, but on March 19, 2006, the pain was just too intense. He went to the doctor hoping for some medication to make him better. Instead, he was told he was within 24 hours of having a massive heart attack because the number of white blood cells in his body was off the charts. Hill had acute lymphoblastic leukemia and a 15 percent chance of surviving. A stem cell transplant and chemotherapy treatments were ordered and Hill’s life changed forever.

Nine hundred and fourteen miles north, Ned Raynolds, a Portsmouth city councilor at the time, read a story about a family living in Stratham that was holding a bone marrow drive with the hope of finding a match for their 5-year-old daughter Jordyn. A 41-year-old father of three, Raynolds reacted like many other parents.

Raynolds was one of more than 1,000 people who became part of the Be The Match Registry of the National Marrow Donor Program because of Jordyn’s story. As it turns out, Raynolds was a perfect match for Hill. Graft-versus-host disease is a common and serious complication in which there is a reaction of the donated marrow or cells against the patient’s own tissue. But Hill just got better and better. A year later, he was given Raynolds’ contact information, if he wanted to call and say thank you.
“I told him I was 100 percent. He got real teary. I told him I really appreciated what he’d done for me. I said if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here today,” said Hill. “It seemed like we knew each other after we kept talking. He’s like a brother to me now.”

“It was an amazing feeling,” said Raynolds. “It was originally the thought of perhaps my 5-year-old being stricken with cancer and wanting other people to donate to save her. Instead, I saved another father and saved his family from losing him. That has been very meaningful.”

Also Mike Swegles of Epping went to church one Sunday in February 2006 like he does every week with his family. The pastor had a special request for the congregation that day. One of its members was sick and needed to find a marrow match. He asked them to attend the drives and become part of the registry to hopefully save this little girl’s life. Swegles looked at the family sitting in front of the church and looked at his family and knew he had to try.
“It’s heart wrenching,” he said. “It’s one of those things that God is saying you need to participate in and support. And we were ready.” Swegles, a father of three, didn’t match Jordyn, but a year later he received a call from Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston saying he appeared to be a pretty good match for someone else. Turns out he was. He later received an anonymous letter that said he was a perfect match, “I’d like to thank you … It’s proof mankind can still be trusted.”
Approximately 70 percent of donations are like Raynolds’ peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) donation, which is a non-surgical, outpatient procedure. The remainder are marrow donations, like Swegles, which is a surgical procedure that requires general or regional anesthesia. The recipient’s doctor decides which method is best for a patient.

In 2009, the program facilitated more than 4,800 unrelated marrow and cord blood transplants. There are more than 7 million currently registered, but the need is still great. Only 30 percent of patients find donors in their family, forcing a large majority of patients to rely on the kindness of strangers.

Stem Cell

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