Watch the video above: Leukemia patient Chris Taylor loses 2nd bone marrow transplant donor. Angie Seth reports.
TORONTO – A 36-year-old leukemia patient is searching for a bone marrow donor for the third time, after his first two donors backed out for medical or unknown reasons.
Chris Taylor was diagnosed with leukemia in 2012. He originally went to Mount Sinai hospital with chest pains and spent several days in the ICU – though doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him, he said.
But several weeks later, Princess Margaret Hospital found his cancer at the chromosomal level. HE immediately started chemotherapy and it went into remission.
“It came back after ten months,” he said. “I was starting to feel better and the side effects were starting to wear off and then the cancer came back.”
They found a match around Christmas of 2013, he said. They started preliminary testing and even got a proposed date but two days before, the donor pulled out.
“Unfortunately that donor was medically unfit to donate,” Taylor said.
So they went back to searching. They found another donor.
“We began again the process of getting ready to go in for the transplant,” he said. “Unfortunately for unknown reasons that donor had to opt-out of the procedure.”
“I was disappointed but I don’t hold any ill-will or anything like that.”
Taylor has now gone back to OneMatch for a third time in search of a potentially life-saving donation.
Marylyn Pride, a spokesperson for OneMatch, said it’s not common for donors to opt-out of the procedure.
“This is actually a very rare situation,” she said. “When donors are brought to the program, whether it’s in Canada or throughout the world, we need to make sure that donors are committed and understand that commitment that they’re making at the time that they are registering.”
To register for OneMatch, a simple cheek swab will suffice. But if you’re found to be a match for someone, the procedure can be a little more invasive.
There are two procedures used to donate. The first, according to Pride, is no more invasive than drawing blood.
“The donor would have a needle put into their arm, the blood would travel through a sterile machine, the machine extracts the stem cells and all other blood products are returned to the donor,” she said. “This process takes about 4 to 6 hours depending on the volume of stem cells the patient requires.”
The second procedure is a little more invasive. It’s technically surgery, Pride said, but the patients will recover after a few days. However the bone marrow itself can take a few weeks to regenerate.
“The donors would be asleep through asleep through the process. They would have small bandage-sized incisions into the top of the hip bone,” she said. “And using those incisions the doctors go into the actual bone itself and extract the volume of stem cells that are required.”
Pride said donors generally take the process “very seriously” and “recognize they are helping a patient somewhere in the world.”
There’s currently 800 people in Canada awaiting a stem cell match. There’s eight collection centres in Canada and 72 international registries. Over 22 million people are registered as potential donors around the world.
As he waits for another potential match, Taylor has had to stop working because he physically lacks the energy. He has a dog and is engaged.
He is hoping a third match can be found before his cancer comes back.
“You’re scared for your life so you’re hoping they find that match and you can get on with your life. It’s been two years now,” he said. “I’m tired, the chemo takes a toll on you and all the rest of it, but so be it, that’s life, that’s what happens, so we just have to go back to what we’re doing which is going to OneMatch to get the word out.”
– With files from Angie Seth
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