Each year in early August, a bouquet of daisies sits on the altar of Stanwood United Methodist Church, a quiet reminder of how Julie Bowers beat the odds.
Kevin Nortz / The Herald
In January of 1989, while a student at Western Washington University, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoblastic lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system. Doctors found a tumor the size of a cantaloupe in her chest.
“There were always percentages that were thrown around,” Bowers said, “like a 70 percent chance that I wouldn’t survive.
“I never thought I wouldn’t make it. You’ve got to look at it like I had a 30 percent chance that I would.”
The flowers her mother buys each year for the church altar celebrate the date of her life-saving bone marrow transplant, Aug. 3, 1989.
Bowers and Irene Laughlin of Marysville are among the 300 former bone-marrow or stem-cell transplant patients participating in Legacy for Life, a three-day event beginning Friday in Seattle.
Every five years, a reunion is held for former Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center patients. Since 1975, the center has performed more than 10,000 transplants, with about 450 of the procedures completed each year. This year’s event is for those who had bone marrow or stem cell transplants prior to January 2001.
Dr. Fred Appelbaum, Hutchinson’s head of clinical research, said he hasn’t missed any of the four reunions held in the past two decades.
“These are patients … who have a disease which, without a transplant, is either absolutely fatal or have a high chance of being fatal in a relatively short period of time.
“It’s wonderful to see the patients you treated five to ten years ago,” he said. “It’s the reason you go do the work you do.”
The total body radiation and chemotherapy Bowers received prior to her transplant temporarily left her too weak to stand.
Tests showed her brother, John Bowers, was the best match for her bone marrow transplant, which she received at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle.
One picture in a scrapbook she has kept on her illness and recovery was taken in her hospital room during her five-week stay. Her head is bald from chemotherapy. Although it’s summer, she’s wearing a sweatshirt. With a weakened immune system, everyone who walked into her room had to wear a mask.
The walls behind her are covered with dozens of notes, cards, hand-drawn pictures and a banner proclaiming: Julie, we love you!
It was this support, and prayers from fellow church members and friends that she credits with helping provide her with the strength to survive.
Bowers, now 40, teaches at Hawthorne Elementary School in Everett.
Her mother, Shirley Bowers, is 81. A former nurse, she was at her daughter’s bedside virtually every day for the five weeks it took to recover from the transplant. She plans to accompany her daughter to the reunion.
Although nearly 16 years have passed since her daughter’s transplant, she said, “Every day I look at her and think, ‘Oh! what a miracle. ’ “
Meanwhile, Irene Laughlin was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins large cell lymphoma, an aggressive cancer, in March 1998. She was 49.
Laughlin underwent eight hours of tests at the University of Washington just to determine if she could survive a stem-cell transplant, her best hope of beating her disease.
She was treated with high-dose chemotherapy that made the skin peel from her body and left her bald. Before her 2-year-old granddaughter came to visit, her daughter put a wig on her, despite some discomfort, to help mask her pale pallor and frail appearance.
“They almost kill you with chemotherapy and radiation for four to five days before you get your stem cells back,” she said.
Laughlin received her transplant on Sept. 16, 1998. Soon after, she was sent to an intensive care unit to closely monitor her racing heart.
“They say 5 percent don’t live through it,” Laughlin said. “I was given a 50 percent chance it wouldn’t work.”
Leaving the hospital after eight weeks, she couldn’t eat simple foods. She was given intravenous nourishment until after Christmas that year. She lost 80 pounds.
In the nearly seven years since her transplant, there have been bumps in her road to recovery. She worked part-time at a credit union, but quit after nine months because of repeated illnesses. “I don’t think my immune system will ever be quite as good as it was,” she said.
She only has 40 percent function in one kidney. She has had bouts with fibromyalgia, although the aches and pains have subsided.
There is much, though, for which she’s thankful. She will celebrate her 57th birthday in December. She’s lived to see her granddaughter turn 8, and spend this summer at cheerleader camp.
Laughlin and her sister, Marian Smith, who visited her almost every day when she was in the hospital, are decorating a wedding arch together and making favors for her niece’s wedding in September.
“You come so close to death,” she said. “You appreciate life a whole lot more.”
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
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