More than 50 missions to collect blood stem cells have been made since the bone marrow courier program started up just over a year ago. Last week couriers were brought together for an appreciation lunch hosted by Bruce Denniston Bone Marrow Society in Powell River.
Eleven of 15 bone marrow couriers attended and were given the chance to share harrowing tales about their life-saving trips. All the couriers live on Vancouver Island, in the Lower Mainland or on the Sunshine Coast. The lunch was catered by Tree Frog Bistro.
The couriering program operates as a partnership between Vancouver Coastal Health and the society at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) in the Leukemia/Bone Marrow Transplant Program of BC. Couriers travel internationally to collect small bags of harvested blood stem cells and have only between 48 to 72 hours to bring their cargo back to VGH.
Retired Powell River RCMP Sergeant Jeff Lott, one of the society’s most recently trained couriers, travelled from his home in Nanaimo to take part in the lunch. Lott completed the training in June and went on his first trip in July.
“There’s a lot of emotion attached to it,” said Lott. “This is the right thing to do.”
Although Lott was stationed in Powell River in the 1990s, he and Bruce Denniston were close friends before Denniston’s death in 1989.
“We worked together and were both RCMP dive team members,” said Lott. ”The training centre for RCMP dive team was here in Powell River.”
Denniston, a well-liked RCMP constable stationed in Powell River, was diagnosed with chronic myelocytic leukemia in 1987. He required a non-family member bone marrow transplant, but at that time a registry did not exist. Despite eventually finding a donor, Denniston died because finding a match took too long.
“I always supported the society and understood what it was all about because a bunch of us went through that with Bruce of not having a match for bone marrow,” Lott explained.
Lott said he heard the society was extending invitations to retired emergency services members to become couriers and was eager to start the training. He was not able to participate in the first training session offered in 2011 because he was away on a retirement trip, but signed up for the session this summer.
“It’s really quite emotional when you arrive in Vancouver and you’re racing to the hospital,” he said. “You arrive in the lab and it’s there and you know that within that day or the next somebody is going to be helped.”
Some of the couriers told stories of how their plans changed because of circumstances in the hospital where they were picking up. For all, the experience, though sometimes stressful, has been rewarding.
“Probably one of the most beneficial things I’ve done was read that request for volunteer couriers,” said retired RCMP member Murray Macham, who spent more than a day travelling back to Vancouver on his last trip to Asia. “What a reward. I don’t care if it was 32 hours—that cooler had something that I hope saved someone’s life.”
