I Have a Donor!

The Gift of Life

Somewhere in the world there is a donor who is a very good marrow match for me! Wouldn't you just know that I would have an exceedingly rare type requiring weeks of scouring the data to find any reasonable donors, let alone a good one.

Nevertheless, I've kept quiet about this because after you've found a donor there are certain additional things that have to be ascertained before unbuckling your belt and letting your belly out. For example, is the donor still alive? Is the donor still willing? Is the donor in Afghanistan and won't be near a collection center until November?

Saturday I learned that the donor had been contacted and had started, or agreed to start, preliminary testing. He/she/it is alive! They are still willing to donate! And they aren't in Afghanistan!

I'm guessing my rare type comes from a military raid on an Indian camp in Tennessee, more-or-less in 1838. Legend has it that an Indian survivor, a young boy, was adopted by a family named Ford and raised like one of their own, which is how he managed later on to graciously worm his way into my family tree. My mother once told me that two of my great uncles were distinctly reddish. Everyone else in my family tree is uninteresting all the way back to Noah.

Meanwhile, the CMV is dormant, my ultra-high level of light chains doesn't seem to be killing me, the insurance company hasn't yet found a way to turn down the allogeneic transplant, and the double kyphoplasty is healing nicely (although I expect there will be another before too long).

Yet I remain weak from the months of high-dose steroids, so weak I need handrails to climb stairs. My beloved piano hasn't had a workout in a very long time, which for me is heartbreaking. I have no appetite, probably from the drugs I'm taking for a persistent sinus infection. In another month I might consider work as a fashion model.

To sum up, it is the perfect plan: there is no margin for error. Every one of these steps has to be successfully reached, none are certain, but the chances of reaching them aren't stupidly small either.

I wrote these words for this overly-long post in December describing the narrow, slippery path I had to follow to have any chance of survival. Today I am a short walk away from the last challenge in the sequence, the transplant itself. Another miracle?