She impatiently waited for him to arrive. Her nerves were getting the best of her, she didn't know what she would say to him. He made all the difference in her world.
Sitting in the waiting limousine was too much to bear, she couldn't sit still. On the small tarmac, as the plane came to a stop, she sprinted to the airplane door.
"Let him out! Let him out! You have Michael!" she screamed at the slowly opening door.
A woman's voice inside said, "He'll be out in just a second."
"No! Let him out now!" she cried.
Michael Henkel was her angel. A stranger from half-way around the world. A stranger whose simple act, gave her hope and life. Lori McFate had counted each of the 2,747 days it took to meet him and Dec. 28, 2013 she finally met her marrow donor.
After years of enduring chemotherapy and radiation treatments for symptoms to an unknown ailment, she finally received a confirmed diagnosis in August 2001. McFate learned that she had T-Cell Lymphoma.
"Now at least they knew what it was. Now they could fix me," said McFate. "Little did I know that T-Cell Lymphoma was a very rare form of blood cancer and there would be many dark days and years ahead."
A cure was elusive. Between the diagnosis in 2001 and 2006, McFate endured five more years of chemotherapy and radiation, but it was not killing the disease. She ran out of options. By chance she met an oncologist who told her to go to the Lied Transplant Center at the University of Nebraska if she wanted to live.
"Not someday, not in the near future, but tomorrow," said McFate. "I learned that my only path forward was a bone marrow transplant. This was my last hope."
"There it was, the first time in five years that anyone had said to me the words bone marrow transplant," said McFate. "But in order to live, to raise my son and to do the job I love supporting soldiers, I know, even with a 50/50 chance of survival, it was my last hope."
Then began the daunting task of finding a donor. No one in McFate's family was a match. No one on the national or international registries matched. It was a dark time said McFate.
She started more chemotherapy, trying to keep the disease at bay while waiting for a donor. She started making plans for her son's future and being realistic about her chances said McFate.
Hope was slowly slipping away down a long dark tunnel as each page on the calendar flipped. When her prospects seemed it's darkest, a 19-year-old man in Germany joined the registry and was a perfect match. It finally seemed real said McFate.
"We'd talked about it, we planned for it, I did my research on it," said McFate. "The emotion that comes to mind is this will really happen now."
We're going to do this and we'll be fine. She says "we" referring to her young son. Her cancer became a joint project. He grew up knowing to water the plants and that mommy takes shots because she has cancer. He gets to visit grandma and grandpa a lot McFate said.
"A 5-year-old has a different concept of cancer then a 15-year-old," said McFate.
So, in between the chemotherapy sessions, McFate wrote a living will and made arrangements to care for son. She would also need her own live-in caretaker for four months after the procedure. Her determination to beat this disease was unwavering, but she knew she had to be realistic. The odds were 50 percent that the transplant would work said McFate.
The long awaited day was June 22, 2006. The donor cells arrived from Germany. McFate received final rounds of chemotherapy and one last blast of total body radiation.
The procedure worked! Finding matches are rare and patients contend with graft vs. host disease which is essentially transplant rejection. Medication keeps it at bay, but that causes damage to other parts of the body. You trade cancer for another disease but the new disease is more manageable says McFate.
As McFate recuperated, she wondered about the young man in Germany. Donor information is kept confidential for two years after the procedure. After the waiting period, Henkel and McFate corresponded a little by email but never spoke to each other.
They finally met in 2013 after McFate won an essay contest sponsored by Angel Medflight. Angel Medflight flew Henkel to Iowa to meet McFate and her family. After a whirlwind two days of visiting, Henkel returned home but is now part of McFate's extended family says McFate.
"He's like a brother to me," said McFate.
Nine years after that young stranger gave life to McFate, the Detroit Arsenal is doing its part to help save lives. A cheek swab and a simple form is all that is required to join the registry. The C.W. Bill Young Department of Defense Marrow Donor Program, more commonly known as Salute to Life, will collect the swabs for inclusion in the National Bone Marrow registry Tuesday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Building 270 lobby.
"Each year, more than 12,000 individuals are diagnosed with a disease that requires a stem-cell transplant," said Kathryn Branstad, manager of quality assurance/regulatory for Salute to Life. "Since 1991, Salute to Life has coordinated more than 6,000 marrow and stem cell donations."
Upon registration, a donor's human leukocyte antigen types are determined, identified with a unique nine-digit donor identification number, and entered into a national database. If a donor is matched with a patient, the donor is given a complete physical examination and educated regarding the two donation methods according to the Salute to Life website.
The first type is the traditional bone marrow donation, where a small amount of marrow is removed from the hip using a needle. This is done under general anesthesia. The side-effects include fatigue, stiffness and soreness says Branstad.
The second type of donation method is peripheral blood stem cell donation. The donor receives five days of medication before the procedure which causes the stem cells to migrate from the bones to the blood. On the fifth day, these cells are gathered using an apheresis blood filtering machine. Common side effects for this type of donation are flu-like symptoms: bone ache, headache, fatigue, nausea. Side effects are managed with acetaminophen says Branstad.
In both cases, the collected cells are hand-carried by couriers to the recipient. They must be infused within 24 hours. Recipients prepare for the transplant by undergoing treatments that destroy their diseased marrow said Branstad.
"Once the recipient begins their preparation for transplant, it is critical that the healthy cells are infused on schedule," said Branstad.
For McFate, she is grateful a stranger stepped forward and agreed to undergo a small discomfort to save her life. She has watched her son grow into a young man and she lives her life to its fullest. She tackles everything with the same enthusiasm she displayed when she burst out of the limousine and challenged that slowly moving door.
"We're going to do this and we'll be fine!" says McFate.
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