Friday’s thoughts
About 13 years ago I was diagnosed with a blood disorder that caused fatigue and regular migraine headaches. Luckily there were drugs available to control the disorder and I was able to continue to work and raise five children, the youngest now 15 years old. There was always a chance that this disorder could evolve into leukemia but I was always told that the chances for it to do so was quite small.
As the school year started this year I was feeling even more fatigued, the headaches were almost daily and quite severe, I frequently had a low-grade fever and had severe joint pain in my ankles and elsewhere. These are all symptoms which could point to leukemia so my doctor ordered a bone marrow biopsy. The results came back and unfortunately pointed to my disease having evolved to Acute Myologic Leukemia. Since this can be a fast progressing disease, I went into the hospital shortly after the diagnosis for a week of chemo treatment to attempt to put the disease into remission. This last Tuesday I was released from Poudre Valley Hospital and will get tested next week to see if I am in remission.
The only cure for this disease is to get a bone marrow transplant or, as they do today, get a stem-cell replacement, from a healthy donor. So once I am in remission, the next course of action will be to get new stem cells. My two biological sisters were tested to see if they could be donors. Unfortunately neither were a match so I need to get a donor from an unrelated donor. There is a national registry that maintains tissue profiles from many donors but there is always a need to get more donors so that the likelyhood of finding a superior match increases.
Working with Poudre Valley Hospital , the church is sponsoring a bone marrow registry drive next Sunday, the 16th. The procedure to register is simple. If you are between the ages of 18 and 60 in good health, you can register. The tissue sample is acquired via a simple swab from the inside of the cheek (just like they do in the CSI shows!)
If you are contacted as a potential donor, they no longer take a sample of your marrow as they used to. Now they give you a drug for several days which stimulates the growth of additional stem cells, the cells which differentiate into the various blood cells the body needs. Once that happens, they will withdraw blood from one arm, send it through a machine which removes the stem cells, and then return the blood into the other arm. I would then receive the stem cells the same way I would a blood transfusion and then I would get the same drug used to stimulate the stem cell growth to accelerate the healing process.
Unfortunately when I receive the stem cell transplant it will be done out of the area. My husband, my doctor and I are looking at multiple locations, all out of state. And I will need to stay there for two to three months to ensure that all goes well with the transplant before I will be able to return home.
The sermon Sunday will include part of this story and will request that we participate in the search for a donor for Lisa next Sunday. We are invited to register. There might be a match for Lisa and there could be other matches. We could save lives. I hope you will sign up on the 16th.
The sermon for Sunday, December 9th has two parts:
We will miss the most important part of Advent if we do not pay attention to the
1.”Platitudes of Advent” Can we see the world from a larger perspective. The vision of the world as it ought to be includes some of the ideas in the prophet Isaiah who imagined a day when the world would be safe for little children and domestic animals.
2. “Imperatives of Advent” God speaks to us in our dreams sometimes and some of those dreams give us an imperative as to what we must do. There will be something in Advent we can do to make a difference. If we miss it we will miss the most important part.
What is our vision of the world?
What is our imperative to do something about it?
If you have thoughts on this subject write me at charlesschuster@fcfumc.net. (click on the space and the address will pop up.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Charles Schuster
