Bandanas...

Today is National Bandana Day, a day where we wear bandanas in support of the Sunflower Fund.

In 1997, my dad was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia and needed to have a bone marrow transplant done.  Early in 1998, he underwent severe treatments, including high doses of chemotherapy and 2 hours of full body radiation a day!  His transplant was done in the March.  He was treated by Professor Jacobs and Dr du Toit in the Sunflower Ward at Constantiaberg Medi-clinic, the same hospital where Jake was later born.  Due to the harsh treatments that the patients are receiving, their immune systems are totallly compromised - they are literally taken as close to death as is possible and then brought back to life again with a transplant.  The sunflower ward is totally isolated.  Visitors may not enter with any hint of a cold or infection, no matter how small the symptoms.  If you think you're going to sneeze, you can't visit.  If your eye's itchy, you can't visit.  The rules cannot be broken and if you take a cold in to visit a patient who has no immune system, it could very easily kill them.

It's probably one of the most frightening places I've ever been to.  I can remember visiting and having to change into sterile hospital gear, taking off shoes and washing myself before going in to visit my dad.  I can remember how sick he was and how sore his body was from the treatment.  He was so weak, I didn't think it was possible that he had a chance of survival.  I can remember being heartbroken at seeing a father walking his bare-headed toddler up and down the corridors and the death of a fellow patient who had befriended my father during their morning run for chemo/radiation.  At the same time that this is a frightening place - one I hope never to need to visit again in my lifetime - it's also amazing what's being done there.  The doctors and nurses are brilliant, to say the least.  They're performing miracles on a daily basis.  And the positive spirits that both the patients and nurses keep up at all times is unbelievable. 

Fortunately for my dad, my uncle was an exact bone marrow match, so we had one less thing to worry about in his being so ill.  The odds, though, of finding a compatible donor are 1 in 100,000.  At the moment, the bone marrow registry is on roughly 64,000 (that includes me), meaning that you only have 2/3rds of a chance of finding a compatible donor locally.  While there are international registries that can be checked for compatible donors, South Africa has so many different ethnic groups, which means our registry needs to have many more potential donors on it's books.  Testing to become a donor is a simple blood test, but costs roughly R1,000.00 (about $150.00), which is money that many of us don't have to throw around these days.  Buying a bandana today for just R20.00 contributes towards these test costs. 

So, today, in honor of all those that have suffered from this disease, to those who have fought the battle and lost, to those who still fight and to those who have come out victorious, I wear my bandana with pride (even though I look like a twit).

Sue X