German stem cell donor visits San Gabriel man whose life she helped saveBy Nathan McIntire, Staff Writer
Posted: 08/07/2010 05:36:49 PM PDT
SAN GABRIEL - Even though local resident Andy Carrico was diagnosed with a deadly bone marrow disease in 2007, he didn't notice anything wrong with his body.
But when Carrico got a nosebleed eight months after the diagnosis, he realized something was wrong when he couldn't get the blood to stop pouring out for more than four hours.
The prognosis for Carrico's survival from myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a bone marrow disease that damages the immune system, was only 13 months.
Knowing a transplant was his only hope, he added his name to a bone marrow and stem cell transplant list, recognizing he had only a 30 percent chance of finding a match.
"You have to find a donor that has the same DNA," Carrico said. "The best thing would be if I had an identical twin, but I don't."
Luckily, he found a match, with just one month left before he was expected to succumb to MDS. And he found that donor in an unlikely place: Wurzburg, Germany.
Carrico received the transplant in July 2007. More than three years later, he is still alive and doing well, and he got a special visitor last week to help him celebrate.
Sabine Zugner, a German nurse, arrived at Los Angeles International Airport last Tuesday to meet the man her stem cells saved.
Carrico said he will be eternally grateful to Zugner for going out of her way to help someone she'd never met.
"She's a giving person and she helps people who are ill," Carrico
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said. "This was just something that seemed like the right thing to do, even though she didn't know anything about me."
It was not an easy process donating her stem cells, and Carrico was not originally supposed to be the recipient. Zugner had her blood tested to see if she was a match of a child in her town who fell ill in 2000.
She wasn't a match for that child and had forgotten all about the transplant registry until she was contacted in 2007 and told that someone else met her stem cell profile, someone she'd never met.
Zugner's son, Daniel Zugner, said his mother did not hesitate when asked to donate her stem cells to a stranger.
"She didn't have to think about it," Daniel said. "It was clear for her to help him."
Only later did she learn where her stem cells were going.
"I was very surprised when I heard my stem cells had come to America," Zugner said.
Zugner had to travel four hours by train to a hospital where her stem cells could be harvested. She was fitted with needles in each arm - "big needles" - and her blood was cycled through a machine for four hours to collect the necessary cells.
The cells were flown overseas and transported to City of Hope, where they were transplanted into Carrico.
Carrico and his wife Stephanie Strout wanted to contact Zugner immediately, but German law kept her name from being released for two years. As soon as they were able, they began exchanging e-mails, and the couple even called Zugner for the first time as a surprise on her birthday.
Zugner is spending 10 days in the United States, and Carrico and Strout have a long list of activities planned for her that included a day at Huntington Beach and a visit to the Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens.
And when Zugner leaves, it won't be the last Carrico sees of her. He and his wife will go to see the nurse who saved his life when they fly to Europe in 2012.
nathan.mcintire@sgvn.com
626-578-6300 ext. 4475
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