Our Cancer Journey, Part Three: The Search For a Donor

(You can read Part Two here.)

By the time John was released from the hospital, the doctors had determined that he would definitely need a bone marrow transplant in order to remain in remission. The trouble was, no donor could be found. All of his siblings were tested, and none were a match. Of over 33 million registered donors in the Be The Match database, not one was even close to a match for John. Though we were trusting God for the outcome here, I will confess that I was pretty scared we wouldn't find one.

Will We Find a Match?
After celebrating Father's Day in the hospital, we checked out just a week or so later, just in time for John's birthday. We were so happy to be home, yet there was this dark cloud hanging over our head--No donors available. After genetic testing, the doctors had discovered that John had a rare genetic mutation that may or may not have caused his leukemia. When all other sources were exhausted, they looked to our two boys for the donation, since they each would for sure be at least a half match, as half the genes they carry are John's and half are mine. So we put out the call to the church to begin praying that one of them would be a match. The day after his release, we met with the geneticist.

I will never forget that meeting. Here we were, the whole family around the table with a man we'd never met who would pretty much be the decider (at least in an earthly sense) of our future. It was kind of surreal, sitting there watching my boys spit into tubes and praying that one of them would be a match. I looked at my husband beside me, thin and pale, and found it very hard to imagine that these two tubes of spit were going to determine whether I would receive him back whole or not. While I know that God is sovereign, and that He already knew the outcome, I have to be honest and tell you that I was not thinking that way in the moment. There was a sense that this couldn't possibly be our lives now, and that I was somehow outside of this scene, looking in.

So Many What-Ifs
There were other necessary factors besides the genetic match. The central one was that the matching son not have the same genetic mutation, just in case it was indeed a factor in the disease. So, not only did one of them have to match, but also the matching one had to be free of the mutation. The odds here seemed slim, and all kinds of scenarios went through my head. I had a million questions: What if neither of them match? What if they both have the mutation? Will we use one of them anyway? Is there a way to alter the mutation? (They're doing all kinds of stuff with genes now, so why couldn't this be a thing?) What will we do if no match is found? There were a million such "what if" questions running through my brain. And it would be forever (two weeks) before we would have the answers.

Those two weeks were the slowest in the history of the world. Though we tried to enjoy our time together, it was through a fog of uncertainty and fear that we passed our days. I remember one day in particular. We were at the lake, which is sort of our "happy place," just watching the sailboats and enjoying the beautiful scenery. At one point, John turned to me and said, "What if it doesn't work? What if we go through all this, and it doesn't work? What if I'm not here?" I know this had been a question in my mind for weeks, but I had not verbalized it. In a way, I was glad that he did. We both cried and just held each other. This was a much needed release for both of us, and really the first time we had shared any kind of grief or emotion regarding his illness. It was a deeply sorrowful moment, but it had a healing and unifying effect on us. After all these weeks of parallel perseverance, this moment of shared lament was a gift.

So many questions, and so little control of anything that was happening. But God is faithful, and He continued to show Himself so in the weeks to come.