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His cells saved her life from severe aplastic anemia
Duke event unites donor, recipient
Dr. Mitchell Horwitz, left, and Anne DeDecker meet DeDecker's stem cell donor, Rob Nugent, during a Duke transplant program reunion at Millennium Hotel in Durham.
By MARTI MAGUIRE, Staff Writer
DURHAM - June 12, 2005 - Rob Nugent was a student at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania when he signed up as a bone marrow donor in 1999. Anne DeDecker was a Cary mother expecting her third child when she found out she had a rare blood disease in 2003.
A year ago, stem cells from Nugent's blood saved DeDecker's life. On Saturday, they met for the first time at the eighth-annual Duke Adult Bone Marrow & Stem Cell Transplant Reunion.
"Your unselfish act in saving another person's life is the ultimate," DeDecker, 40, told Nugent and a crowd of about 300 transplant survivors and their families. "A combination of your stem cells, my ailing body and the efforts of the nurses and doctors has made this miracle happen."
Transplant survivors from Duke Medical Center's Adult Bone Marrow & Stem Cell Transplant Program gather each year to share their stories and thank the doctors and staff members who saved their lives.
Saturday's reunion was the first of its kind for the Duke program. Nugent, who lives in New York, said the meeting "gives new meaning to the word surreal."
A 15-minute video he saw at his fraternity house in 1999 persuaded him to go to a drive on campus the next day to get his blood sampled and put his name on the national registry.
Four years later, he took a drug called filgrastim every day for a week. Nugent, 26, said the drug, which increases the number of stem cells in the blood, "makes your bones feel heavy."
Then his blood was drawn and put through a machine that separates the stem cells, which create new blood. The procedure took about six hours, he said.
DeDecker found out in June 2003 that her bone marrow was not producing enough blood cells for her to live, a condition known as severe aplastic anemia.
Most people have more than 150,000 platelets, which help blood clot, per milliliter of blood at a given time. When DeDecker started feeling weak about six weeks into her pregnancy, she had only 16,000. And the numbers only got worse.
"My body seemed to be on a downward spiral," DeDecker said. "I would have a transfusion every day, only to have 2,000 platelets the next morning."
That July, what felt to her like a migraine headache turned out to be a brain hemorrhage. She lost the baby and was told her only chance was a transplant.
She began chemotherapy in January 2004 to kill the cells in her bone marrow and started receiving Nugent's stem cells that February. Once they were transfused into DeDecker's body, Nugent's stem cells moved into her bone marrow and began producing new blood cells. Within a few months, she took on his blood type.
"To think I only felt kind of bad for a week and this saved someone else's life is amazing to me," Nugent said Saturday. "It's worth going through a small amount of pain."
The seven doctors in the Duke program perform up to 200 transplants per year on patients suffering from about 15 different diseases, said Dr. Nelson Chao, its director.
Chao said the annual event gives patients a chance to talk about their common experiences and reminds his staff members what their work means to people.
"The patients really enjoy coming and sharing their stories, and it gives the staff a chance to step back and recharge their batteries," Chao said.
Staff writer Marti Maguire can be reached at 812-8539 or mmaguire@newsobserver.com.
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TRANSPLANT PRIMER
ABOUT BONE MARROW/STEM CELL TRANSPLANTS: Using the phrase bone marrow transplants is a misnomer in most cases these days. The vast majority of donations -- including Nugent's -- are actually of stem cells taken from a donor's blood. In some cases, however, marrow is still surgically removed from the donor's bones and implanted into the recipient.
TO DONATE: Because becoming a donor requires that your tissue be typed, you may be charged for typing. Medical professionals are hoping the federal government will subsidize the donation program. Until then, the only ways to become a donor for free are to donate platelets, a procedure similar to donating blood, or to register through an organization sponsoring a drive, as Nugent did.
ONLINE
National Marrow Donor Program: www.marrow.org/
Duke Medical Center's Adult Bone Marrow & Stem Cell Transplant Program: http://bmt.mc.duke.edu/
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