Kathryn Cartwirght
Cancer category: Leukaemias
Cancer type: Acute myeloid leukaemia
Kathryn Cartwirght
Kathryn Cartwright was 16-years-old when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a cancer of the myeloid line of blood cells. Having undergone successful chemotherapy and multiple transplants, she is all too aware of how precious life can be.
It all began for Kathryn when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in August 2007:
“My story is fairly unique, actually, totally and utterly- there is a paper being written about me- and I think it might help people who feel like they're at the end realise that there's always hope. I needed a stem cell transplant as soon as possible because standard treatment would have most likely resulted in relapse. I had a Peripheral Stem Cell Transplant (PSCT) in December of that year from my sister and it went incredibly well and I was home in thirteen days, fastest transplant ever. I didn’t get any graft-versus host disease (GVHD), a common complication following a tissue replacement, so no graft vs. Leukaemia.”
But in April 2008, Kathryn relapsed:
“I started chemo again, even with only a one in five chance of survival, and I had my second transplant in July '08 from a German man. This time I got extensive GVHD this time, especially my skin and gut. Once that was under control, I went home, but the GVHD decided to move into my eyes whilst still in the acute stages. We managed to get that sorted (by this time it was the start of October?), then on Halloween 2008, I spiked a temperature and went to hospital.”
“Two days later, my eyes started to turn yellow.”
After a month of being sick for no apparent reason, a liver biopsy showed that Kathryn had chronic GVHD in her liver:
“At the start of December it was decided that I needed a new liver. I had Grade IV GVHD and my liver was shot to bits. Bile was leaking into my bloodstream, into my brain, and slowly poisoning me. My parents were told that I probably wouldn't see Christmas. The 21st of December 2008 was my lucky day, and I got a liver. About a week later, my haematologists were doing my chimerism tests to make sure I was still the German man (figuratively speaking), when they found that there was no trace of male DNA. It was decidedly female. However, it wasn't me, and it wasn't my sister. Searches were done, a blood sample was procured, and it was discovered that the stem cells from the liver had travelled to my bone marrow, and I'd had a third, inadvertent, stem cell transplant, and my blood type had changed from A-positive to O-negative.”
“I am the only person in the world that this has happened to.”
In June 2009 Kathryn left hospital:
“It took six months of rehab for me to learn to walk again (I lost all my muscle mass in the time preceding my liver transplant), learn to eat again (my stomach lining was destroyed by the GVHD and I had no enzymes to digest anything) and try and become a slightly more normal human being. I now have chronic lung and skin GVHD from the third PSCT, and am being treated monthly in Rotherham with photopheresis by Dr. Peter Taylor (who is, quite frankly, a genius), and I sometimes use a wheelchair. Life is tough, but I have an incredible family and wonderful friends, and I am happy. I'm alive, and that is more than I could have hoped for a few years ago.”
