Pioneering Transplant Patients Reunite in Seattle

By Sally James, cancerpage.com
Seattle

(August 4, 2000) - In a ballroom full of cancer survivors, there was squealing, hugging and hands clapped together in high-fives. Just like college roommates reunited, these 200 former cancer patients plus their families had bonded by surviving the ordeal of cancer and of a bone-marrow transplant at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.

"Remember the Toy Lady?" asked one woman of a stranger she was just meeting. "I still have my owl. I look at it every day," replied Barbara Russell of Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Everywhere you turned during the first day of the three-day reunion, there were people talking about the stuffed animals they had turned to as talismans in a difficult time. "Mine were all dogs," another patient recalled. "I keep them on my computer."

The cancer center, affectionately known as The Hutch, pioneered the use of bone marrow transplants to treat leukemia in 1969. In those days, there were only about 20 patients treated per year and survival was a grim 10 percent.

Today, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center treats about 450 cancer patients per year and survival for some cancers is as high as 80 percent

Survivors came to the free event from all over the United States and the world. They came to remember, even though some of those memories were grim.

Barbara Russell remembers a 22-year-old man who was hospitalized with her in 1991 with lymphoma. He died within a few days of her meeting him. She was 46 at the time of her transplant, labeled "too old" for a transplant from the Dana-Farber Cancer Center near her home in  Massachusetts. But her doctor persisted in finding her a place at The Hutch. She was not going to accept failure in her treatment. She was determined.

"If I had to stand naked in the hallway to get better, I would have," Russell explained.

Over and over at the reunion, one heard stories with a common refrain. These patients had to fight to get to The Hutch. They were determined to argue with oncologists who said it wouldn’t work, and to argue with insurance companies who wouldn’t pay, or they went into debt to pay themselves. In the 1980s, more of the transplant patients were pioneers who had to struggle for insurance coverage. By the mid 1990s, transplants for at least some leukemias was routine.

A transplant costs about $120,000, according to some patients.

Families brought together by this reunion took tours of the sleek laboratories at The Hutch, and remembered the old buildings were they had been treated. Some laboratories bear plaques from former patients and now sponsors. Opera star Jose Carreras, for example, donated a laboratory. A touring survivor, Rosalind Krojansky of Van Nuys, California said she would not have come to the Hutch had her sister not read  a newspaper account of Carreras’ transplant.

"My sister told me about it and we looked into it. UCLA wouldn’t take me because I was too old," Krojansky recalled. She was 45 years old when The Hutch accepted her. She had her transplant in January of 1989 for acute myelogenous leukemia.

Touring patients passed a courtyard full of bricks donated by former patients and many of them decided they wanted to buy a brick while they were here for the reunion.

"It makes me feel so good to see other people who’ve made it," Krojansky said.

After a day of touring, the survivors attended a dinner held in a ballroom at the University of Washington. They were entertained by the classical piano playing of a former patient, teen prodigy Philip Scharnburg-Peters, who had a transplant when he was seven years old, and returned to donate his talent in a performance for the group.

Seated at the concert grand piano, Peters looked tiny in the hot stage lights, but his rendition of an emotional work by composer Rachmaninoff told a musical story of strength and courage that every one in the audience could hear.

"Your courage, stamina and heart are an inspiration to all of us," a speaker told the crowd. Hutch staff members took the podium to thank the assembled survivors for making good medicine possible. After the event, people lingered, wearing badges that told the year of their transplant. They took pictures with their nurses, their support groups, and their friends from a time they aren’t ready to forget.

SOURCES:

• Cancerpage.com coverage of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Patient Reunion August 3-5, 2000.
• The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center