First: Sadness, hope and sorrow. Then: Anxiety, relief and gratitude.
Laura Gintant experienced the first cycle of emotions as a close friend struggled with leukemia, had a bone marrow transplant and later died of complications. The second cycle came as Gintant prepared to give marrow, how a 3-year-old boy with leukemia accepted it and then began sharing in each other’s lives.
Gintant, 27, was inspired to give marrow as part of Be The Match Foundation when her friend, Nikki Finley, was in need of a transplant.
Sadness
“It was heartbreaking to see someone that loved life, and was fun to be around, go through that,” Gintant says.
Finley’s family wasn’t a match, neither was her husband, Mark, or Gintant, but a stranger was.
Hope
“She could get better, and she could fight the leukemia,” Gintant says.
After the transplant, Finley’s 30th birthday party was joyous.
“She was so happy to be home,” Gintant says, “but she didn’t want to go to the hospital.”
Sorrow
Finley began to struggle with an illness and died from a respiratory infection in September 2009.
Her funeral was on a “cold, rainy, bleak, dreary” day, Gintant says. “It encompassed how we felt.”
Gintant returned to work as a clinical researcher with American Medical Systems in Minnetonka. One afternoon in December 2009, she got a call from Be The Match about a possible recipient, a little boy from Omaha, Neb. Was she still interested?
“I started crying,” Gintant says. “I never thought the call was going to come.”
She worked with Mark Finley, and walked to his desk to share the news.
“Now, it’s my turn to help,” Gintant says. “Niki didn’t make it, but I felt like she was watching over and going to make things alright.”
Anxiety
The donation in January 2010 was Gintant’s first medical procedure.
“Be the Match explained everything and had a great support staff,” Gintant says. “They made the process really easy from beginning to end.”
Gintant left the hospital the same day and said the pain felt like she bruised her tailbone.
But how was that little boy feeling?
“I know what I went through and I knew what Niki went through,” Gintant says, “so I couldn’t imagine what a little 3-year-old was going through.”
Relief
Due to Be The Match’s regulations, Gintant didn’t hear from the boy’s family for a year. Then, a hand-written card came in the mail, saying thanks and that the family wanted to meet.
Gratitude
In January 2011, a year after the transplant, Mark and Heather Jensen and their three children came to Minneapolis for Owen’s check-up.
“I don’t think I slept that night,” Gintant says of the eve of meeting Owen.
When they met, Gintant and the Jensen parents started crying.
The Jensens called Owen over. He flashed a big grin, and said, “Hi, I’m Owen!” Gintant recalls.
He then ran away to play with matchbox cars with his older brother and sister.
Gintant and the Jensens shared stories, ordered pizza and “totally lost track of time” over the next eight hours.
…
Gintant and the Jensens speak regularly. Owen, now in kindergarten, called to say he scored a goal in a soccer game last fall. Gintant went to visit in Omaha last summer.
“It’s weird to say that I saved someone’s life,” Gintant says, “but I can say that.”
&
KFAN Radio’s Chris Hawkey was on air, reading a public service announcement about bone marrow donation. The message echoed through headphones into the head of the morning show host from Maple Grove.
“How could I not help save people’s lives?” Hawkey remembers thinking.
Hawkey swabbed the inside of his cheek for DNA and awaits a call for a possible donation from Be The Match Foundation.
Be The Match needs you too. Odds of donating are 1 in 540, so of the estimated 1 million people with a blood cancer, only 16,600 will have a chance at a life-saving transplant, according to the American Cancer Society and the National Marrow Donor Program.
Visit marrow.org or call 800.507.5427 to get involved.
