It came out of nowhere.
We had spent the entire day out together as a family. We went to the mall, got lunch and met up with T’s parents for dinner. S was fine the entire time; she had been running around, talking and laughing throughout the day so, when we arrived at home, I was surprised when T told me that S’s head felt warm. I dropped T and the kids off and went to run one more errand by myself. A few minutes later, T texted that S had a temperature of 100.5.
Half an hour later, she was over 101.
Forty-five minutes after that, she was at 102.6.
The fever turned out to be viral, of course, because there was no way S would have been lucky enough to get an infection we could have killed off quickly with an antibiotic. As T and I sat in the pediatric urgent care waiting room, I reached out to my Be The Match coordinator to let her know. It was a Saturday night and I was scheduled to start getting my filgrastim shots later that week. She wrote me back that everything was fine and that the process would move forward as usual; I should just keep an eye out for any symptoms on my end.
You know how the next part of the story goes: the only things kids like to share are germs. S’s fever lasted four days, E’s went for three days and T took her turn for the three days after E had finished. I kept telling myself I would be able to avoid getting sick so that I could donate – my first filgrastim shot was the day before T felt really sick – but it wasn’t to be. My temperature rose the afternoon before I was supposed to donate and stayed fairly high the following morning.
T and I still made our way to the hospital in the morning, though our hospital contact spoke to us on the phone and said that the plans had changed somewhat. She said that the staff couldn’t put in a central line while I had a fever because it was a more involved procedure and they were worried about me getting worse because of it. She still wanted me to come in, though, so she and the team could make the best plan for moving forward.
I’d been feeling nauseated and dizzy all morning, but only partially because I hadn’t eaten any breakfast. I had been thinking about the central line, the size of the needles, which vein the nurses would use, what I would look like with tubes sticking out of my neck or my collarbone or my who-knows-where-else. I was worried about fainting while getting the central line or while the collection was happening, even though they had said they couldn’t put in the central line while I had a fever.
Most of all, I was worried that the collection wouldn’t happen at all.
It wasn’t that I had already received the five days of shots or that I’d demonstrated my weak disposition in front of an entire nursing unit. It wasn’t that T and I had made the trip into the city early in the morning and disrupted our kids’ schedules in the process. It wasn’t even that I’d already told people about the donation and received well-wishes and admiration from so many about my role.
It was that I knew that my potential recipient had started his own treatment to eradicate his immune system to prepare for my stem cells. Without my new cells, he was probably going to die.
When we arrived, T and I (and the lump in my throat and my back-flipping stomach) went up to the exam room and spoke with the transplant coordinator and the PA about my situation. The nurse took my vitals – yep, I still had a fever – and, after giving me a quick exam, the PA said that the collection wasn’t going to happen that day.
My heart sank immediately, as though it had been tied to cinder blocks and thrown off a dock. That’s it, I thought. He’s going to die. He’s been fighting through blood cancer and he’s going to die because I caught a stupid virus from my toddler.
My nausea got worse and my head began pounding. I closed my eyes for a minute as I felt blood rushing through my ears, pulsing with every beat of my free-falling heart. I took a breath, fought off the slight chill that was trying to make its way up my spine and forced my fists to unclench.
The coordinator answered a question from T that I had barely heard. “There’s always a plan B,” she said. “The recipient’s doctors never put all of their eggs in one basket. Even if the stem cell donation is the recipient’s best chance for survival, they know that complications happen. We don’t know what that alternative plan is, but we know they have one.”
“Plus,” she continued, “we still have one more day.”
The rushing in my ears slowed and I opened my eyes again.
“We can delay one extra day with these transplants, just in case there is a complication. So let’s wait until tomorrow and see if you’re feeling better. Then, if your fever is gone in the morning, we’ll collect you then instead and things will be simpler.”
At that moment, just as quickly as it had tightened, the knot from the cinder blocks came loose and my heart started rising back toward the surface.
The PA said that they would run some tests to see if they could figure out what virus I had so that they could tell the recipient’s medical team what symptoms to look for. She recommended that I spend the rest of the day relaxing and drinking lots of fluids. She said that the fluids would help flush out the fever and, hopefully, hydrate me enough that my veins would get larger than they had been when my blood was drawn. With any luck, I wouldn’t even need the central line and I could donate the next day whether I had a fever or not.
I felt the tension ease in my shoulders and the rhythm in my temples became quiet. My stomach finally took a break from its gymnastics routine and I was able to exhale.
There was still a chance.
This is part of a series I’m writing documenting my experiences donating stem cells through Be The Match. If you missed them, here are the other parts in the series. Please also visit Be The Match to find out more about their mission, their program and the people they have helped. I hope you’ll consider joining the Be The Match Registry so that you can potentially help save someone’s life.
Just in case you were wondering, I haven’t partnered with Be The Match in any official capacity for this post, aside from my being on their donor list. I wasn’t compensated at all, nor will I be for any future posts or my involvement in the program.
