From a 10% chance to a full life
While in the waiting room for a routine check-up, five-year-old Chanelle Matthee started getting red dots around her eyes – a symptom of low blood platelets.
The doctor ran a blood test, and that same day Chanelle was diagnosed with Aplastic anaemia. The only cure would be a bone marrow transplant.
With a weakened immune system and a risk of uncontrollable bleeding, Chanelle was taken out of preschool and began treatment, receiving over 70 blood transfusions.
Chanelle recalls: “One time I couldn’t go to the hospital because there was a gastro-pandemic. Blood blisters formed in my mouth and burst. I had to sleep upright to keep myself from choking on my blood in my sleep.”
Eighteen months later, out of SABMR’s association with worldwide registries, a match was found for Chanelle in Germany.
Chanelle’s body rejected the first transplant, and also the second.
Her health declined so rapidly that her parents were told that she had a less than 10% chance of survival with only two weeks to live.
Chanelle remembers realizing that she was dying: “I had peace about dying, I was so tired of fighting, but I was worried about the people I was leaving behind.”
Nobody was certain that Chanelle would survive the radiation and chemotherapy preparation for a third full transplant.
But she did survive. And the transplant was a success. But it took two years for Chanelle to get her strength back.
But Chanelle considers herself fortunate, and says, “I’m not the healthiest person on the planet, but I’m not the sickest”.
Four years after her third bone marrow transplant, Chanelle and her family were invited by the German registry to fly to Germany and meet her donor, Dietmar.
It was a very emotional meeting and Dietmar wept with joy seeing Chanelle alive.
Dietmar had registered with the registry after seeing an advertisement for a little girl who needed bone marrow. And two years later, Chanelle needed a match.
Now all grown up and hoping to make her career in physiotherapy, for all those people out there still waiting for a lifesaving medical treatment Chanelle shares a message of hope: “Miracles do still happen”.
Each time a life is saved through a bone marrow transfusion, it confirms that miracles can and do happen because special people, like you, care enough to make them happen.
Thank you.