Women become ‘blood’ related after stem cell transplant

Two Indigenous women on separate sides of the country didn’t know how a Canadian Blood Services poster of a child asking for help would change their lives forever.

“There was a quote and there was a picture of a little girl and she was sick,” said Veronica Bernard, a Mi’kmaw leader in Potlotek First Nation in Nova Scotia.

Bernard said the little girl was wearing an oxygen mask and it said she had a type of cancer.

“It caught my attention,” she said. “It said that she needed me to live and to go online to the Canadian Blood Services to find out more. So, I went on my computer at work and then I started reading up all of this stuff online.”

It was in that moment in 2006, when Bernard decided she was going to help in whatever capacity she could and signed up to donate blood.

But that wasn’t all she did. The young woman also submitted her name as a stem cell donor.

Statistics show Indigenous people currently make up less than two per cent of all potential donors on Canada’s stem cell registry. Canadian Blood Services representatives are hoping to grow this number, so more Indigenous patients can have access to the life-saving transplants and therapies they need.

One of the steps in the donation process requires donors to complete an online exam that illustrates their understanding of what they are signing up for.

“I remember I got 100 per cent and I kind of laughed to myself afterwards,” she said. “I just did these two things right quick and now in my brain I was like now that poster in the coffee room isn’t gonna bother me anymore.”

Soon after, she received a kit to swab the inside of her mouth. She completed it at home and then sent it back to Canadian Blood Services.

Unlike blood, stem cell donations require specific genetic matches. When people sign up to join the stem cell registry, they swab their cheek so that they can be matched with a patient who has similar genetic makeup.

In 2014, Bernard was walking into work and her secretary said someone from Canadian Blood Services had called a few times.

“At this point I’ve been on the registry for eight years,” Bernard said. “I accepted the call and there was a woman on the phone and she asked me if I remembered going on this (stem cell) registry and I said yes.”

Bernard was asked if she was still interested in being on this registry. Once she confirmed she was, Bernard was told she came up as a potential match for someone.

Despite not fully understanding what that meant, Bernard was happy to know she could potentially help someone during an extremely difficult time in their life.

She travelled to a nearby hospital in Sydney, N.S. to have new blood exams completed.

“They were drawing my blood and I remember the woman was making small talk with me and she was said you must be so happy (because) what you’re doing is really amazing,” Bernard said.

In Canada, about 1,000 people are waiting for a life-saving stem cell transplant.

Stem cell transplants can treat more than 80 diseases and disorders including cancer, bone marrow deficiency diseases, aplastic anemia, and inherited immune system and metabolic disorders.

Stem cell matches are determined according to DNA markers called Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA). HLA are proteins or markers the body uses to identify which cells belong in the body, and which do not. For a stem cell transplant to be successful, it's important to find a very close match.

Of the people in Canada in need of a stem cell transplant, only 25 per cent will be able to find a match within their biological family. This means the remaining 75 per cent of patients will need an unrelated volunteer stem cell donor to be their match.

“They are more likely to find a matching donor among those who share their ethnic ancestry,” said Kathy Ganz, director of stem cells for Canadian Blood Services. “That’s why it’s important that Canada's national stem registry be as diverse as our country.”

Bernard’s match was for Judee Bowman Reid, a senior Métis woman from Maple Bay, B.C. She was 65 at the time and had been fighting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for the past three years.

This type of cancer is present in the immune system and begins in a patient’s lymphatic system. White blood cells, called lymphocytes, grow abnormally forming growths throughout the body.

“I had three years of chemo to try and keep it at bay,” Bowman Reid explained. “That was three years of gruelling three or four different types of chemotherapies. My specialist said ‘You’re at the end of the road now. We got to do something special.’ And so he recommended that I go to Vancouver.”

In Vancouver she met with a hematologist who asked if they began the search for a donor would she accept it.

Bowman Reid agreed.

“It didn’t take long, actually it maybe took six months,” she said.

The results from Bernard’s tests showed she wasn’t a potential match. Instead she was a perfect match for Bowman Reid.

Following the good news, Bernard began preparing her body for the stem cell transplant. She started living as clean as possible, including eating nutrient-rich foods and staying away from anything that could be considered toxins including simple pain relief medications.

At the same point Bowman Reid was also receiving treatments to try and “cleanse her blood” for the transplant.

“There was all this prepping,” Bowman Reid said. “Taking various medications to cleanse my blood as much as possible.”

After six months of preparation the two were ready for the transplant to take place.

Bernard travelled three and a half hours from her home to Halifax.

On the morning of the transplant, she was nervous but, “was just really determined to get this done.”

She described the machine used to withdraw her blood to be much like a dialysis machine. She had two needles injected into sites on her forearms. One took blood from her body while the other put it back into her body after filtering through the machine.

“It’s kind of like a big circle and it’s just going and going,” Bernard said.

This seemingly simple process was also a surprise for Bowman Reid who described how a needle was placed into her that was hooked up to a bag of fluid.

The “bag” or stem cell transplant, replaces the patient’s unhealthy stem cells with a matching donor’s healthy stem cells.

“It was very underrated,” Bowman Reid said. “My daughter said ‘I thought this was going to be a really big deal.’ And it did turn out to be a really big deal because it took and that was just fabulous.”

During the past 10 years, Bowman Reid has basically lived a healthy life, cancer free. She gives credit wholeheartedly to Bernard’s amazing gift for the years she’s enjoyed with her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Since the treatments took place, the two ladies have become very close friends, even travelling across the country to meet each other.

“We exchange gifts, emails, texts,” said Bernard, who is a 44-year-old mother of four now. “I met the majority of her family and she knows all my kids. She got to meet my husband when I flew up there in September of 2022.”

Though not true family members, the two joke how technically they are blood related.

“She’s not just a random person, she’s really, really, close to me and I feel like she’s like a family member,” Bernard added.

This bond is something that may be unusual for typical stem cell transplant donors and recipients, however, Bernard and Bowman Reid want other Indigenous people to understand how important it is to become a donor.

“Please think of how important you are to someone else,” Bowman Reid said. “By registering at the Canadian Blood Services, that can grow to having a life saved and, more than likely, a life that will become your family and you’ll be connected forever.”

There are resources for those looking a matching stem cell donor available at

https://www.blood.ca/en/stemcells

Assistance is also provided to assist with a stem cell recruitment drive.