The Perfect Stranger: Meeting Wanda's Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (HSCT) Donor

Aaron, Wanda, and me, Newport Beach, 2013

My friend, Wanda had a particularly nasty form of CLL. I say had, because she has been disease free for long time, all because of the kindness of a stranger who is a stranger no more.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Wanda had had a difficult time with her cancer. Her leukemia had resulted in multiple hospitalizations include at least twice for near death experiences with septic shock, recurrent disabling and painful infections despite heavy duty prophylaxis and an aggressive CLL clonal evolution of the dreaded 17p deletion. And I am leaving out huge chunks of her travails.

Clearly when she looked at her options a few years ago, it was apparent that she couldn't keep going much longer without more therapy, but her fragile immunity couldn't have tolerated the blows from the chemotherapy that she needed.

This has just before our awareness of the promise of the emerging TKIs such as ibrutinib (PCI-32765) and idelalisib (CAL-101) in CLL and at that time, her options were mighty limited.

Wanda bravely elected for an allogeneic stem cell transplant, but wisely chose one where there was no chemo! A transplant and CLL researcher that I knew, Dr. David Miklos at Stanford had an innovative small but growing successful series of outpatient allo-transplants for CLL using only very low dose radiation and high dose ATG (anti -thymic globulins) to briefly knock out the recipient's T cells just long enough to sneak the donor cells into the marrow. No immune suppressing chemo is used, not that all the animal antibody of the days of ATG and radiation to the gut is a risk free or pleasant experience.

Still it was perfect option for Wanda, as her dangerous period of immune suppression would be both of shorter duration and lower intensity.

Steeling her nerves, all in, ready to go for the move up to Palo Alto for the months of therapy and follow-up, her difficult to find perfect 10/10 donor backed out at the very last minute.

Emotionally sucker punched, Wanda's knees may have buckled, but ever the fighter that she is, she just got ready to face what ever would be thrown at her in the next round of her cancer battle.

Enter the perfect stranger. Or at least a nine out of ten donor. A match made in in heaven. Her transplant hopes were rebooted.

More than a year after the HSCT, she found out that this genetic near doppelgänger was a rock solid sweet family man from a small town two hours north of Houston, Texas.

Her transplant path since has had its share of scares and joys, but Wanda is CLL and infection free these days. She is living big and is always ready to be more than generous and thankful for the chances she has been offered.

Earlier this week, it was my great privilege to join Wanda and her family and friends to celebrate her donor and savior, Aaron and his wonderful young family in her backyard.

For those few of us who have had that opportunity to meet and thank the perfect stranger from miles away who's selfless actions have saves our lives, it is one of life's magic moments. We meet someone we probably would never have met. Someone whose whole upbringing and life experiences make have no common points of connection with ours. A path we might never have crossed and a hand we might never have shaken if it wasn't for their random act of kindness that mades us blood brothers.

Knowing that we truly are all in this together can change everything. It makes the world bigger and brighter.

I am still in frequent contact with my Israeli donor, Yaakov and living in gratitude for his painful and selfless efforts to help a stranger. I remember so well the tears of thanks and the tidal wave of emotion when we first met.

The world is a better place because of the work of doctors such as David Miklos (and let me share this celebratory moment with my doctor, Steve Forman, at City of Hope), true heroes such as Aaron (and my donor Yaakov), and survivors such as Wanda.

I am lucky to be able to share in these celebrations.

Yaakov and me meeting in NYC, 2009

My blog started all about my transplant adventure and has subsequently morphed more into my editorials and interviews on blood cancers, and I will write again soon about CLL and other malignancies including the still important role of transplants, but I haven't forgotten my original vision for this blog. Even though my transplant failed, it bought me the time to get to the game changing treatment with ibrutinib that I am enjoying now. If it weren't for Yaakov, my story might have ended years ago.