Category: Cancer

A chance encounter in a hospital waiting area led to a remarkable full-circle moment when a South African stem cell donor unknowingly saved the life of the very child who inspired her to join the registry.

In October 2022, Petro was walking into a hospital in Centurion for a routine check-up when she stopped to speak to a grandmother sitting near the entrance with a baby on her lap. The little girl, just a few months old, was receiving treatment for leukaemia. Petro went in for her appointment, went home, and could not stop thinking about her.

“That was quite a powerful meeting, realising that this was a really sick baby, and that her life depended on having a life-saving stem cell transplant,” she recalls. Within days, she had ordered a swab kit and joined the South African stem cell registry.

The little girl was Lydia.

Her family had first noticed something was wrong after noticing a yellow cast on her skin in a photograph taken with her older brother, something that nobody had registered in the day-to-day. At four months old, Lydia was diagnosed with Infant Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia and admitted to hospital the same day. Long blocks of chemotherapy followed, along with recurring infections her weakened immune system could no longer fight, and a week in intensive care with pneumonia.

“When Lydia was diagnosed, our whole world changed,” her mother, Estelle, remembers.

Her medical team had been clear from the start that a stem cell transplant offered the best chance of survival. Towards the end of 2022, the family received the news they had been hoping for: a donor match had been identified. Shortly before the scheduled transplant, the planned donation was unable to proceed.

“This broke my heart,” Estelle shares. “It felt like we were back at the beginning again, and that was painful.”

The search resumed with no guarantee it would end differently. Only 30% of patients needing a transplant find a compatible donor within their own family. For Lydia, that meant her chances depended on an unrelated donor somewhere in the world whose tissue type matched hers.

When the call came, Petro was nearing 50 and half expected to be told she no longer qualified. “I was actually quite happy and honoured, because I knew this is it,” she explains. “I knew there was a patient on the other side who really needed this as a life-saving measure.”

She describes the donation process as straightforward. “It was nothing more than a blood donation times two, basically. It’s a few hours out of your day.” 

Lydia was admitted for her transplant in February and spent nearly seven weeks in isolation with her mother. Gradually, signs of recovery emerged. She began eating again. She started to put on weight.

Months later, once the confidentiality period had lapsed, Petro joined a WhatsApp call with Lydia’s family. She began telling them why she had registered: the hospital in Centurion, the baby, and the grandmother at the entrance. As she spoke, she noticed the family starting to smile. The grandmother was on the call too.

“Lydia’s mother told me that they were that patient, they were that family,” she says. “I was absolutely flabbergasted. What are the odds of that happening?”

Her own family took it just as hard. “My mother cries every time we talk about Lydia,” Petro adds. “She remembers seeing her at the hospital when she was so tiny.”

Lydia is now four years old. She has caught up on developmental milestones she had missed and has not been readmitted since the transplant. “She will always have a special place in my heart,” Petro says. “She’s got her whole life in front of her.”

The cost behind every match 

None of it happens without a swab kit, and a swab kit is not free. Signing up costs the person registering nothing, but every entry carries a cost, most of it in the laboratory tissue typing that turns two cheek swabs into a searchable set of markers. This year, Sunflower Month is being marked under the theme Hope That Lasts, with every financial contribution helping to fund another registration through the laboratory and onto the registry, where a searching medical team can find it.

Held each September, the initiative dates back to 1999 and the founding of The Sunflower Fund, after two young South Africans, Darren Serebro and Chris Corlett, were diagnosed with leukaemia. Corlett painted a picture during treatment and called it Sunflowers of Hope. Following their passing, a vision to grow the registry so patients would have a better chance of finding a match. More than two decades later, Lydia became one of those patients, diagnosed with the same illness.

South Africans between the ages of 17 and 55 who are in good health can register as stem cell donors at no cost.

Petro has one message for anyone weighing it up. “Take that responsibility seriously and really commit. You can mean the difference between life and death for a patient.”

Palesa Mokomele, Head of Community Engagement and Communications at DKMS Africa, says the gap between a willing volunteer and a usable match is a financial one. “Every contribution puts another swab through the laboratory and another name on the registry. If you are eligible, order a kit. If you are not, fund one. And say something about it to the people you know, because Petro only registered because a stranger at a hospital told her what was happening. This year’s theme is a reminder that something you do today can make a difference years from now, perhaps for someone you have never even met.”