Posted on 12/24/2004 10:05:49 PM PST by Coleus
On the day a priest came to her hospital bed and prayed over her withered body, Diana Abad would not have believed good fortune awaited.
Or seemed to be, until one day her back started to ache and another day her legs swelled. She had her blood tested and learned her white-cell count was absurdly high. Leukemia, her doctor said. Without a bone-marrow transplant, she would be dead in nine months.
David Mason would not have believed in 1990 that by checking a box on a Navy form he would set in motion the chain of events that led him to the love of his life.
He didn't give the bone marrow registry another thought.
The marrow registry had been created by Congress in 1987 to pair up donors with people in need of transplants. The registry stores information about the tissue type of 5.5 million people.
Ten years after Mason checked that box, he received a phone call telling him his tissue might be a match for someone who needed a transplant. He agreed to go to Massachusetts General Hospital for further testing. When those tests confirmed the preliminary match, he was asked if he would be willing to donate.
One day, after the last rites had been administered and after all of Abad's sick marrow had been killed by radiation and chemotherapy, a doctor appeared at her bedside at Sloan-Kettering with a clear bag of the thick, red marrow harvested from Mason's bones.
The procedure was all-or-nothing. If the transplant grafted -- if her body accepted Mason's marrow and used it to begin producing healthy blood -- she stood a good chance of survival.
Her marrow transplant had gone extraordinarily well. Her body began making healthy blood.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
My granddaughter had an umbilical cord bone marrow transplant at 15 months old. She never made enough white blood cells, and then her bone marrow began failing and the red blood cell count began to fall, despite nightly shots of stimulating factors.
Roni had O neg blood, karyotype 46, XX. Her donor was a little boy (46 XY), with type A+ blood, matching about 70% of her immune markers. Now, Roni's blood is A +, 46 XY. She had to have her shots again, because all of the (too few) white blood cells that were exposed to the immunizations where destroyed by the chemotherapy that killed the rest of her bone marrow. From the transplant on, all cells that are derived from the bone marrow will be those of the donor.
(I think she can be a Baptist preacher, now, but, I'm not sure :) )
The DNA of her other cell lines, including her ovaries, heart, skin, etc. are her's - 46 XX. But, wherever cells grow from stem cells in the bone marrow, from now on, they will be from the donor.
It turns out that this sort of transplant of stem cells has always occurred in nature: we've found that mothers of boys may have male cells in the thyroid, liver, etc.
We have something in common - granddaughters who were treated by stem cell transplants.
But, only the cells that arise from her bone marrow will be of the different DNA. She's a chimera, with 2 types of cells with different DNA in each cell line.
Fascinating! This story line will show up on Crossing Jordan or Law and Order, if it hasn't already!
God Bless your granddaughter. May she have a long and happy life.
Thanks.
So even if not listed on the FR excerpt list, a site might still belong in the restricted category, which FR's posting filter will catch.
Right?
thanks.
A friend worked in a lab that did cell typing for forensics labs - they've already had cases with chimeras. Very fascinating, at least. Can you imagine? The suspect is female, but she bleeds male blood.
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
isn't it true that minorities get their blood tested for free for bone marrow transplants?( for donation )
I agree with a tears alert.
Coleus,Bump but did not read,fatima
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