Dallas Flight Attendant, Valerie Waite, told us last December that her 19-year-old son Justin had been diagnosed with leukemia. They did chemotherapy right away and did a bone marrow transplant shortly after. His 10-year-old brother, Jackson, was a 100% match. Doctors were confident the transplant would work. Justin was in remission for a while, during which time he and his long-time girlfriend got married.
Justin and Karlee, his wife
Shortly after that, Justin went in for routine testing and they found out the leukemia was back, as though it had never left.
The transplant hadn't worked.
Valerie was crushed and terrified for what that might mean for her elder son. Doctors performed another round of chemo while they searched the National Registry for another bone marrow donor. The medical community said that because Jackson was so young, his cells were not strong or mature enough to conquer the leukemia. There are approximately seven million people listed on the registry. Out of that pool, none of them were 100%. Valerie came in to the lounge one day and I asked how everything was going. She broke down and spent quite some time talking with me. She had that feeling that she needed to do something to help, but just didn't know what to do. She had mentioned that the hospital talked with her about doing a donor drive in an effort to find a match for Justin, but she was quite flustered (understandably so) and didn't know where to even begin.
My heart grew attached to Valerie the minute I met her, so I instantly felt those same feelings. I told her, "I don't know what, if anything, I can do, but get me a name and a phone number and I'll give it everything I've got."
It truly was a miracle. I played a lot of phone tag and asked a lot of questions, but exactly one week later we held a donor drive at the DAL station! One week after that, we held another drive at Headquarters across from Love Field.
I was blown away.
Drive at Headquarters
Sitting there watching so many of our Employees filling out the paperwork and doing the mouth swabs... all to help LUV on a Fellow Employee. It was a true display of the Southwest Family in action. Between the two drives, we had a total of 257 Employees added to the registry and tested to see if they are a potential donor match. The recruiter from Be The Match (the nonprofit that runs the drives) was shocked by the number of participants we had. They were not expecting that kind of response and said they could definitely feel the LUV pouring out for the Waite family.
Justin's next transplant attempt is scheduled for the first week in October, and we are all praying that this one takes and his body can begin to heal.
Do you want to learn how you can help save a life? Be the Match. All it takes is a cheek swab!