It was a dark, dreary, drizzly day in January. I was 8 years old. My world was crashing down around me. My mom had cancer. I buried my face in my older sister’s embrace and tried to pretend this wasn’t happening, but it was.
In January of 2006, my mother was diagnosed with stage IV Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Life as I knew it was about to change forever. For the next six and a half years, I watched my mother battle cancer with the tenacity of a warrior. Not once did I ever see her defeated. Not through the rounds of chemo, the vomiting, the bone marrow biopsies, the blood infusions, the shots in her stomach, the two stem-cell transplants, or the loss of her hair – 3 times. Cancer became a part of our lives, but not our LIFE.
My mom spent many days in the hospital over those six and a half years. During her hospital stays, she received numerous blood products…many transfusions of red blood cells and platelets. When her cancer relapsed for the second time in 2012, it was decided that a donor stem-cell transplant was her best option for survival. Oklahoma Blood Institute organized a blood drive at my school in my mom’s name. Be the Match was also there to test for possible matches for my mom. We had a record turnout and my mom received 110 blood credits and 20 people signed up with Be the Match. Several other locations near our community also held blood drives for my mom and she received an additional 51 credits. Although no match was found during our blood drive, Be the Match eventually found a perfect match for my mom through the national registry. Her donor was a 21 year old young man who made the decision to visit a blood institute and sign up to be a donor. This young man, whom we had never met, made the selfless decision to save a stranger’s life.
Kasey Peterson and his wife, my mom’s donor from Marietta, Georgia
Life-saving blood products and my mom’s double lumen port!!
My mom having cancer is, of course, not the path my family would have chosen for our lives. But I have come to understand that “God causes all things to work together for good”. Along this path, my eyes have been opened to what is truly important in life. Without the OBI and people who donate blood products and stem- cells, my mom wouldn’t be with us today.
To all of those who work for the Oklahoma Blood Institute, Be the Match, or have donated blood products, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! To anyone who is fighting a battle with this beast we call cancer or has a family member or friend who is, I pray that you will never lose hope. OBI once had a quote on their web page that said “You don’t have to be a superhero to save someone’s life. You just have to be a giver.” I say that these givers and the OBI are my superheroes!! Because of their selflessness, I still have my mom!
My mom and I in 1998 and in 2016