Silvia's life changed completely when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a type of cancer in which the bone marrow produces large amounts of abnormal blood cells and for which she has had to undergo chemotherapy treatment. "Before I never thought about death, now I think about it almost all the time," she confesses during an interview with La Voz, which she does accompanied by her daughter Daniela to ask the population to donate bone marrow.
"Now I navigate between life and death," she continues. Silvia received her diagnosis on January 4 of this year. Until she found out the reason for her weight loss and the ganglion that appeared in her groin, she went twice to the Emergency Room of the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital. "The first time they told me that that was the Emergency Room and that it was collapsing because of something that was not urgent; the second time, they diagnosed me with vertigo," she recalls now. After finding the diagnosis in a complete analysis in a private hospital, her daughter began to investigate her mother's symptoms and came across the possibility that she had leukemia.
When she was referred again to the public hospital, a medical team confirmed her suspicions. "I want to thank everyone at the hospital, the healthcare workers, the doctors, the hematologists, the assistants. From the cleaning service, everyone has been very kind to me, they have treated me very well," says Silvia, who does not want her experience in the Emergency Room to cloud the professionalism with which she has found in the Hematology ward.
Driven by the disease and the consequences of chemotherapy, this 53-year-old woman has suffered continuous hospital admissions and the loss of energy she enjoyed before. The last two months have been for her "a whirlwind" that she never imagined she would have to live through, yet she clings to the positive and joking attitude that she says is part of her way of being.
One of the things that has been hardest for her to face has been the loss of her hair, "we had to remove the mirror from the bathroom because the first time I saw myself I had tachycardia," recalls Silvia, who before the illness wore long hair with blonde extensions.
After finding the diagnosis, her two children and her sister had blood tests to check their compatibility and see if they could donate bone marrow, but none of them are compatible with her. "Seeing that I could not help my mother, I decided to publicly expose the need for people to donate bone marrow and blood because my mother needs transfusions almost daily," says Daniela. "All this makes me feel very tired physically, with very little energy," reveals the survivor.
"I am not compatible, but maybe someone within Lanzarote, at the island level, there is someone who can be," continues her daughter. "Although I am not making this call only for myself, but for everyone. Until I was diagnosed, I was not aware of what it implies to have leukemia, I knew nothing about this," adds the mother.
The regional transplant coordinator of the Canary Islands Health Service, Gemma García, explains that "the probability of finding a donor within the family is only 25%" and that to address the lack of donors there is a World Bone Marrow Donor Registry.
How to become a bone marrow donor?
To be able to donate bone marrow you must be between 18 and 40 years old. Interested people should enter the website canarias.medulaosea.org and fill out the registration form where different personal data and possible diseases that may contraindicate being a donor are asked. The whole process is anonymous and altruistic, you cannot select which specific person you are going to donate to.
"Once that registration is completed, the autonomous transplant coordination contacts the user to complete the registration and make a small blood extraction," indicates Gemma García. This extraction, which is carried out on all the Canary Islands, including Lanzarote, is a blood test of histocompatibility antigens, which allows obtaining the DNA of the blood and "assessing the compatibility between the recipient and the donor." After that, a person can officially become a bone marrow donor and enter the World Registry.
More than 42 million donors in the world
The World Donor Registry has 42 million people registered to donate and "if at some point someone is compatible with your bone marrow, then a series of more specific tests of serologies, immunity and others are done to be able to reach that extraction," continues the Transplant coordinator in the islands. According to data from the Ministry of Health, in Spain there are already half a million bone marrow donors. Despite these figures, currently people who need a donation have a 1 in 3,500 chance of finding their donor in the world registry. "The more we are, the better," encourages Gemma García.
Before, to donate bone marrow you had to prick the hip bone, but nowadays it can be done by apheresis, a process to extract stem cells or other components from the bloodstream while the rest of the blood is returned to the body. This procedure, less invasive than the previous one "entails a recovery for the donor much faster, much less painful and with many fewer complications", with medical leave of around a week.
Economic consequences
Currently, Silvia states that the economic factor has also been very impactful. She went from being unemployed and receiving 1,300 to receiving a social security aid of 455 euros for temporary disability due to long-term illness. She also states that she still needs to find out what other financial aid she can access.
