Yair Newman & Ilai Mishori

Ezer Mizion Bone Marrow Registry:Yair and Ilai were a genetic match--the only genetic match among hundreds of thousands of potential donors.

 

The Mishori family finally met the man who saved their son Ilai's life. This is the kind of event that you can't speak about easily without sliding into clichés. That's because in this case, the cliché is the simple truth: There wasn't a dry eye in the room.

 

Yonatan Gur, Yediot Achronot-24

 

The first ones to arrive at Ezer Mizion's Guest Home for Children with Cancer in Petach Tikva were Ilai and his mother Dorli. The father, Ran, stayed home with fever. He wasn't feeling well, and did not want to endanger other children in the building whose immune system is compromised. Grandparents Bina and Benny Milner came along as reinforcements. Ilai, aged one year and nine months, pushed a carriage around, toddled here and there, and waded in the ball pit at the play center, not really aware of the tremendous excitement that surrounded him.

 

"Ilai doesn't understand what's going on so well, but I am very, very excited," said Dorli. "I cannot even begin to describe what a different place we were in just a year ago. The passing of a year is a real landmark, not only because we can finally meet the person who gave Ilai life, but also because it means that the transplant was a success," she said, choking up as she spoke. "I'm afraid to even say the words."

 

Yair Newman, the donor, who was anonymous to the Mishori family until the moment of the encounter, came to Ezer Mizion accompanied by his family. "All year long, I thought often about the child to whom I had donated my bone marrow. It just cannot be captured in words. Right now, my heart is beating hard," said Yair a few minutes before Ilai and his family entered the room where the moving encounter was to take place.

 

"The greatest gift you could give him - you already gave. Now, we have a gift for you," said Dorli after the first few minutes of the two families' meeting. She handed Yair an impressive book, home published, named "To my dear donor." The colorful pages and bright pictures documented and illustrated Ilai's life from his birth, through the time of his illness and until his recovery, thanks to Yair's bone marrow donation.

 

Gradually, the ice was broken. Yair took Ilai for a little walk through Ezer Mizion's on-site petting zoo. Ezer Mizion's Bone Marrow Donor Registry staff, along with Anat Yahel, the stem cell transplant coordinator at the Schneider children's hospital, looked on with interest and emotion from the side.

 

"We waited so much for this meeting," said Dorli. "All year long we thought about this moment. I hope that we will maintain contact with Yair, because now, he is really like a brother to Ilai."

 

The race against the illness: When Ilai was four and a half months old, he became ill with what looked then to be the flu. His body could not seem to shake the illness. He was hospitalized, but his condition continued to deteriorate into a serious case of pneumonia.

 

A bone marrow test confirmed the doctor's fears. Ilai was suffering from a very rare genetic illness called HLH - a blood disease which strikes only one in every 1.2 million. In the course of the disease, the body attacks itself and destroys the immune system. At the first stage, Ilai underwent a difficult series of chemotherapy treatments and steroid injections in order to achieve a hiatus in the course of the illness. But it was clear that only a bone marrow replacement could ensure that the illness would not return.

 

"There is nothing that can make your world collapse like such a situation," added the grandmother, Bina Milner. "We went through a very very hard time, but when the entire world is crumbling around you, what helped was the supportive family, a family that consisted of all those special people we met along the way - from the hospital and Ezer Mizion staff and volunteers and on to the bone marrow donor.

 

Enlisted for Life: A few years earlier, Yair Newman, then 19 years old, was hanging around with his friends in Jerusalem. "We were just before our army stint, and we were out for a stroll. I saw an Ezer Mizion stem cell donor recruitment station, part of a national campaign that was taking place that day. Without giving the matter much thought, I gave a blood sample," related Yair, surrounded by his family who accompanied him to the moving meeting. "I felt that I had to join the registry by giving a small blood sample. It seemed to me to be the right thing to do."

 

For four years, the data lay in the Ezer Mizion donor pool not matching any of the hundreds of patients who were searching our registry, until it became clear that Yair was a good match for a bone marrow transplant to Ilai.

 

"When Ezer Mizion's registry called me, I didn't even remember at first what they were talking about. But when they explained the matter to me, I agreed immediately to come down and give my stem cells," said Neuman, today a 24 year old resident of Beer Sheva. "I cannot describe in words the wonderful feeling it gives."

 

The process elicited a not very big test tube of bone marrow, which was then injected into the body of the baby, Ilai, who was already after a series of aggressive chemotherapy treatments meant to wipe out whatever was left of his own defective bone marrow. After two very difficult weeks, during which his body fought against the foreign bone marrow that had invaded it, his condition began to improve. "Those were the hardest weeks of the entire span of the illness," says Mishori. "But gradually, the blood counts went up, and Ilai began to feel better. Two months later, he came home. We have no way of thanking Yair and Ezer Mizion for saving Ilai's life!"

 

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