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When Carroll School of Management senior Kayla Hammergren signed up for a bone marrow registry during a campus recruitment drive two years ago, she knew the chances were slim she’d ever be a match for anyone. But recently she met the little boy who is alive and well thanks to her, and the bone marrow she donated.
On April 26, the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation held its inaugural Walk for Life around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, and it was there Kayla had an emotional and joyful face-to-face introduction to four-year-old James Strejc, who had traveled with his family from Houston for the event.
“I’m just amazed and excited about how well it worked,” says Kayla, a San Francisco native. “I’m still on cloud nine with the fact that I got to meet him. I was so excited to see that he’s healthy and has so much energy.”
“She did an extraordinary thing,” says the boy’s mother, Stephanie Strejc. “There aren’t a lot of people who would do what Kayla did for a complete stranger.”
James’ journey to meet his benefactor would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when he faced daunting odds after being stricken with leukemia a second time in his young life. A six-month hospital stay consisting of chemotherapy and radiation seemed to rid James’ body of the cancer, but five months after the treatment stopped, a brain tumor developed.
“We were told, ‘He needs a bone marrow transplant otherwise the cancer will keep coming back and he doesn’t have a chance for survival at that point,’” recalls Stephanie. “We were very scared.”
Neither Stephanie or husband Nick were matches, and James didn’t have any siblings, so the family turned to a national bone marrow registry, hoping and praying for a miracle.
“You can’t give up on hope: That’s the only thing you have to lean on and if you don’t have that, you’re just going to fall apart,” says Stephanie. “We tried not to think of the alternative because that would mean we would lose our son.”
The success rates of finding such a match vary greatly based on age, diagnosis, care, and treatment, according to the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation, the national registry that would bring Kayla and James together.
“Since people are most likely to find a match from someone of similar genetic ancestry, the odds of finding a match depends largely on whether or not that patient’s background is underrepresented in the registry,” says foundation representative Marti Freund. “Siblings match only 30 percent of the time, so 70 percent of the population needs to find a match from an unrelated donor via a public registry.”
As it turned out, there was not one but two matches for James – but the first potential donor didn’t want to go through with the procedure. So Stephanie made sure the next person on the list would know something about whom they were helping.
“I wanted them to know how old James was. I felt like maybe in some way that would change their mind. This was a two-year-old boy who has a whole lot of life to live and he’s dependent on someone else to have this procedure done for him.”
The next person turned out to be Kayla.
“All I knew was it was for a two-year-old little boy diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia,” she says, recalling the moment she had to make her decision. “I could never let someone know there was hope and then back out. My thought process entirely was I hoped that someone would do this for me or my loved ones, so how could I not do this for someone else?”
So, a few days before Christmas of 2013, Kayla went to Boston’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute, where doctors undertook the painful procedure of extracting bone marrow from her hip with a hollow needle. A month later she learned the transplant had worked but shortly thereafter, while studying abroad in London, came the news that James was having complications.
“He had a virus of some sort that he couldn’t fight off on his own, so they needed my T-cells to help him. While I was in London, I actually had to go give blood.”
By then, Kayla had developed strong feelings for the child she had never met.
“When I heard he wasn’t doing well and needed my blood to help him, I remember crying because I was so emotionally tied to this little boy hoping that he would get better. I lit a candle in every church in Europe that I went to and said a little prayer for him, hoping that he would recover. You definitely get a lot more emotionally tied than you think.”
Finally, a year after the transplant came the news she and the Strejc family had been praying for: James was cancer-free.
“I was ecstatic,” says Kayla. “I remember getting that phone call and wanting to break down into tears when I heard the news.”
Amidst the joy was unfinished business: Patient and donor had never met; they didn’t even know each other’s names. Fortunately, the Walk for Life provided the perfect opportunity to change that.
“Because of Kayla, James is still with us,” says Stephanie. “He’s an extraordinary little boy and he’s so full of life, happiness, and health. I just wanted her to see him, to get to know him, so that way she can really understand what she gave us. I just wanted to give her a big hug and try to thank her for what she did. She saved my son’s life. I don’t think you can properly thank someone for that.”
“I couldn’t even hold back my tears,” says Kayla. “The second they said his name I started crying. I was so excited just to see him.”
Kayla and James took an immediate liking to each other, hugging, playing, and taking in the walk around the reservoir together.
“I tend to be kind of a goofball sometimes so it doesn’t surprise me that I would get along with a little kid,” says Kayla, with a laugh. “He’s a giant ball of energy and an amazing little boy. I can’t wait to see all the things he does. Everyone is saying, ‘Well, BC is in his blood, so he should be an Eagle,’ but we’ll see where he ends up.”
Kayla will graduate from the Carroll School later this month and this fall begins work at Digitas in Boston, where she has been hired as an account manager. Wherever her career takes her, she says she plans on staying in touch with the little boy whose life she saved.
“The fact that I’ll be able to watch him grow up is an absolutely amazing thing,” says Kayla. “I can’t wait to see what he does.”
“James has a new friend and he will definitely grow up to know who Kayla is and the wonderful thing that she did for him,” says Stephanie. “She’ll be getting pictures and hopefully we’ll be seeing her next year at the same walk. I know Kayla doesn’t want a lot of thanks, but she’s going to get it anyway. We’ll be thanking her for the rest of our lives. Kayla is a spectacular person. We need more people like Kayla.”
Kayla says she’s seen a deluge of good wishes and congratulations and is thrilled at how the news of this selflessness and compassionate act is spreading among the Boston College community and in social media.
“People are getting the message here,” she says. “People are hearing that things like this do work and that here at Boston College we should be men and women for others and I think that this is a good example of how we can do that. I’m just hoping this helps grow the registry to get more people out there to hopefully help others.”