Lisa Lockerby was diagnosed with acute
lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in 1991
“Does this mean I’m going to die?” Lisa asked innocently to
Dr. Nantel, the hematologist at the Vancouver General
Hospital. He had just diagnosed her with leukemia.
“Not necessarily” was his reply. These simple words of hope
became Lisa’s lifeline for the next five months while her
treatments pushed her to the edge of death, threatening, but
never taking.
Lisa’s bone marrow transplant was on January 27th 1992. She
was thirty-three years old. It was also her sister’s birthday. Lisa
was admitted to the hospital on January 19th. For four days they
loaded her up with ‘humongous doses of chemo.’ Then she had
three days of total body radiation; everything but the lungs. They
were killing off all her bone marrow
to allow her body to accept the
marrow from her sister, Gail. One drug was
so potent it turned the intravenous line going into her body
to cement.
“They take you down so close to death,” she said.
Her 39-year-old sister flew in from Ottawa the day
before; she was a perfect bone marrow match. At 8
am, they extracted 1½ litres of Gail’s bone marrow
from four places in her hip. They cleaned and washed
her marrow, extracting a potentially lethal germ. At 3
pm, the pink gelatinous material was infused into Lisa’s
main vein. It should have taken 2–4 hours, but for Lisa, it
took 9 minutes...
