Jodie's amazing anonymous bone marrow donor was a 30 year-old USA male in 2014. His bone marrow was harvested in the United States and urgently flown in an icebox to Australia with a scientist in tow. Jodie's donor was about to 'rescue' Jodie from yet another blood cancer, after seven days of strong chemo, wiping out all of Jodie's diseased old marrow - the marrow she was born with.
Because Jodie's donor didn't have enough stem cells/bone marrow from his first marrow harvesting, his hospital in the USA had to try again. Eight hours later - the harvested bone marrow was rushed onto an Australian-bound plane with only approx. eighteen hours before it's 'use-by' date expired. It takes fourteen hours alone, for a 747 to fly from the USA (California) to Australia (Queensland).
As a result and after her hospital had checked Jodie's new bone marrow, only two hours remained before the new marrow had to be thrown and the whole process started over - which could have been not only costly, but deadly. But, Jodie was transplanted, just in time. Due to Jodie's transplant with a (matched) unrelated donor - her blood type changed from O+ Positive to A+ Positive (the blood type of her donor). She now carries both the DNA of her donor and that of her parents. Jodie does deal with five versions of rejection disease (GVHD), however - she is alive - and here to love her family and to share her story of optimism and hope.
Read below for the beginning of Jodie's struggle to find an initial diagnosis
