Survivors, families join to celebrate life
But Christine Pechera needed no interpreter
to give thanks to Kam Tsuen “Kent” Wong.
Her broad, beaming smile spoke volumes.
Wearing a red badge she designed that read “hero” in Chinese, Pechera stared at the man whose gift saved her life. Slowly, tentatively, she opened her arms to embrace him. With a shy grin, he locked her in a deep hug, as dozens of onlookers applauded and wiped back tears.
Pechera, a hematopoietic cell transplant recipient and cancer survivor, met Wong — her marrow donor — on April 25, 2008 at the “Celebration of Life” Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation Reunion. Wong flew to City of Hope in Duarte, Calif., from Hong Kong with his family to meet her for the first time. “I can’t get over thinking that it’s his blood flowing through my veins,” said Pechera, a Los Angeles resident. “It’s his marrow in my bones. This is the guy who saved my life.”
photo: Thomas BrownChristine Pechera, left, meets her hematopoietic cell donor, Kam Tsuen “Kent” Wong, for the first time.
Pechera and Wong were one of two pairs of donors and recipients who met at a press conference at City of Hope as part of the reunion, an annual event now in its 32nd year. Thousands of transplant recipients, family members and friends attended the event, which included lunch, a group photo and entertainment, as well as a visit from representatives of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The press conference also featured the first-time meeting between two men who live considerably closer to each other in California. Darrell Weinberg, an Amgen finance manager from West Hills, donated hematopoietic cells to save the life of Julian Gold, M.D., a Beverly Hills anesthesiologist.
These first-time meetings between patients and their donors “are in some ways very private, but we’re grateful they share this with us,” said event emcee Stephen J. Forman, M.D., Gold’s physician and the Francis and Kathleen McNamara Distinguished Chair in Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation.
In honor of ThinkCure, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ official charity supporting cancer research at City of Hope and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt attended the event, along with guest speaker Tommy Lasorda, the Dodgers’ former manager. Janet Clayton, president of ThinkCure, also attended.
Lasorda began managing the Dodgers in 1976, the same year that City of Hope’s bone marrow transplant program began. Since then, City of Hope has performed 9,000 transplants, Forman said, and the combined years of life saved through the bone marrow program has risen to 21,079.
Forman lauded nurses, physicians and patients, and asked the audience to silently remember patients who were gone yet continue to inspire family, friends and caregivers. “In the act of remembering, lost souls are recovered and they live within us and they are again smiling, healthy and hopeful,” said Forman.
The day culminated with a group photo featuring Lasorda surrounded by transplant recipients sporting Dodgers caps.
“When this is over today, you will go on with your lives,” Forman said, “and we will go back into the lab and to the hospital to help those who are here now and long to be with us next year.”
Forman also attended a second reunion several weeks later, as dozens of cancer survivors and their family members, friends, physicians and nurses joined together to celebrate life at the 11th annual City of Hope-Banner Health Bone Marrow Transplant Program’s reunion in Phoenix.
The program, which opened in 1997, has performed nearly 800 transplants.
Several patients at the event shared compelling stories about their own treatment experiences, while physicians discussed the history of the program. In addition to Forman, physicians included Jeffrey Schriber, M.D., the program’s medical director, and Joseph Alvarnas, M.D., then director of the program’s cell processing laboratory, who is now director of quality systems for cellular therapeutics in City of Hope’s Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation.