Stephanie Rossi is a local woman who was diagnosed two years ago with an extremely rare bone marrow failure disease called Severe Aplastic Anemia (SAA). She recently left P.G. for Vancouver to receive a life-saving Bone Marrow Transplant. Stephanie spoke publically for the first time to mypgnow.com, with the hopes of not only raising awareness for the condition but also bringing attention to the shortage of certain healthcare amenities in Northern BC. This is part two. Part one can be found right here.
The idea of a Bone Marrow Transplant was initially introduced to Stephanie about a month after her official diagnosis in 2019, and her Hematologist initially assumed finding a donor would be easy and told Stephanie that her son shouldn’t be tested to see if he’s a match.
Due to the relatively new diagnosis, Stephanie decided to wait and try other treatments before considering it but the doctors began searching for a donor just in case, this is when her siblings were tested.
“I didn’t want to live in Vancouver for four months and leave my family… I really wanted these treatments to work.”
Doctors conducted a provincial, national and international search for a donor but couldn’t find a 10/10 match for Stephanie, they found 9/10 matches but because Stephanie’s body has so many antibodies, doctors wanted a 100% match.
It was then Stephanie’s son, Jared was tested as a last resort, after what her husband, Nevio described as an ‘exhausting’ search.
“Then one day, Nevio and I were just driving around and the doctor called me and she seemed super excited.”
It was then Stephanie learned that her son was a 7/10 match, and given that they’re so closely related, her son possessed different properties that made it much easier for Stephanie’s body to accept the Bone Marrow.
Stephanie wanted to wait it out before committing to the transplant, she says she felt healthy ever since she was taken off Immunosuppressants and continued her weekly blood transfusions while managing to avoid any infections.
However, she knew that at any point her body could develop antibodies against the people that were donating blood for her transfusions and decided it just wasn’t worth the risk of living with SAA.
Stephanie knew she needed to move forward with the Bone Marrow Transplant, and scheduled one for July of 2021.
“They found that my son was really my only hope. And it’s scary, it’s hard to put your son in that position because he’s my baby, but I don’t have a choice and he really wants to do it so that was really hard for me to say yes because I’m 55, I’ve had a life and he’s only 32 and he just had a new baby but they’ve assured us that he will be safe.”
Normally, people with Aplastic Anemia that undergo this transplant only need stem cells, but given Stephanie’s extremely high antibody count, she requires bone marrow to be transplanted.
The Bone Marrow Transplant is a one-time procedure, lasting about two hours, her son will be put under anesthetic as doctors extract the bone marrow from his hip area.
Her transplant will take place at Vancouver General Hospital under the guidance of Doctor Maryse Power and a team of about 15 specialists.
Before the transplant, Stephanie is undergoing a series of treatments throughout this month, including chemotherapy and the HATG treatment that left her feeling incredibly sick the first time around.
“During this whole thing, I’ve never asked ‘why me, why couldn’t someone else deal with this, because I wouldn’t want anyone else to ever deal with this. I believe in God and honestly think he has been protecting me this whole time and has kept me safe from getting any severe infection.”
Stephanie and Nevio left on Monday, June 7th for their up-to 6 months stay in Vancouver, during their time there, they’ve committed to advocating for more healthcare resources in Prince George and Northern BC.
“One of the reasons we were in Vancouver for so long in September of 2019 was because they had to coordinate things with Prince George and they couldn’t because the resources weren’t there, the specialists weren’t there, they had to line things up with our doctors. They were actually worried to send me back, two Hematologists told me that they did not feel comfortable sending me back,” said Stephanie.
Part of the reason Stephanie decided to go public with her medical journey was to not only raise awareness for the condition but to raise awareness of the shortage of resources and specialists available to help Northern British Columbians battling rare conditions.
Stephanie would like to send a special thank you to all the dedicated nurses in IV therapy (P.G.) and also wants to share a special thank you to everyone who has donated platelets.
“If they weren’t here, I wouldn’t be here.”
She is scheduled to undergo the procedure on July 14th, mypgnow.com will continue to update her journey.