Opinion - Top opinion

POSTED: Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009

A blessed gift can serve as an inspiration to others

The courier who brought the bone marrow cells to John Shula's hospital room also delivered a postcard.

"Dear Stem Cell Recipient,

"This card brings with it my sincere wishes that my stem cells give you all that you are hoping for. I am blessed to be able to do something which may be a real help to someone I will never meet.

"Kindest regards,

"Your Donor."

What Shula was hoping for was to live and to live free of the chronic lymphocytic leukemia that had stalked him for more than a decade. The Fife High School teacher knew those cells which had traveled 7,238 miles from Australia might be his last chance.

That was 2004. It turns out "Your Donor" was wrong to say she would never meet the recipient.

"I've been wrong before," joked Bronwyn King last week as she and Shula were retelling their story. The 42-year-old, who lives near Brisbane, had traveled with her husband and two daughters to stay with Shula and his family near Puyallup.

It was an understandable assumption. A donor is not to know anything about the person who needs her cells, unless both parties consent. She was told only that it was an unrelated recipient, somewhere outside Australia.

King said she didn't think twice about joining the global bone marrow registry. A dental technician and regular blood donor, King said she is fascinated by human biology and confessed to having a hard time saying no.

"I have 'YES' tattooed on my forehead," she said. Initially she was asked for a few extra vials of blood and then a bit more for tissue typing.

"They said I was unlikely to be selected and a month later they said no thanks," King said. But in April 2004 she was told she appeared to be a match.

The process can be uncomfortable but bearable, she said. Injections to stimulate bone marrow production left her feeling achy and tired - symptoms she compared to the flu.

Meanwhile, in Puyallup, John Shula was told to get to University Medical Center in Seattle. The cells were on the way.

I first wrote about Shula in 2000 when he was having a stem cell transplant using his own cells. He had been fighting leukemia since 1994 and while traditional chemotherapy had helped, his cancer always came back.

Shula, who then taught science at Surprise Lake Middle School, used his transplant as a teaching tool - writing a daily journal for his students. "John's Journal" was a funny and poignant telling of his journey; it attracted a global audience.

That transplant didn't help - not enough anyway - and Shula spent the next several years using different treatments to keep the cancer at bay. Finally his doctors said he needed to make a decision.

"They said, 'You can stay as you are and see how long you can last, but it's going to kill you,'" recalls Shula, now 46. "I had a wife and three teenaged boys. I wanted to stick around and be their dad and Michelle's husband."

So he agreed to a transplant using donor cells.

"As wonderful as this woman is," Shula said with King sitting next to him in his home, "her cells kicked my butt."

Shula became a battleground. His body saw King's cells as an invader and tried to kill them. But his immune system also was inspired to kill the leukemia cells. He survived a series of brutal and potentially deadly infections.

"Little did they know how tough that marrow was," Shula said.

Back in Australia, King didn't know much, even though she'd agreed to be contacted. In August 2007, she received a letter from the U.S. Shula was alive and his cancer was in remission. Since then, they have exchanged many e-mails and her husband Doug suggested a grand tour of the West Coast. Between Disneyland and an Alaskan cruise came an American Fourth of July with the Shulas.

Both want to encourage people to join the marrow registry (www.marrow.org). Only a handful of potential donors are asked to give and are free to back out.

"Of course, had I said no, then he would be dead," King said.

With his hand gently on her shoulder, John Shula looked at Bronwyn King and said: "Thanks for not saying no."

Peter Callaghan writes for The News Tribune in Tacoma.