Every time Lourdes Wang looks at her 4-month-old baby, she’s reminded of how fortunate she is. "The fact that I went through a bone marrow transplant, survived and was able to have a baby is just amazing," said the former Sunnyvale resident and Stanford patient. "Emily is a miracle."

Wang, who was diagnosed with leukemia three years ago, is one of 3,000 patients who have had bone marrow transplants at Stanford. On July 27, hundreds of them, along with family and friends, returned to the medical center to meet with their physicians and nurses and to celebrate their recoveries. The reunion is an annual event that Robert Negrin, MD, director of Stanford’s adult BMT program, said he and his colleagues look forward to all year.

This year’s transplant reunion continued the tradition of allowing patients to return and share their stories. PHOTO: COURTESY OF BMT PROGRAM

"It’s hard to express in words what the reunion means to me," said Negrin, an associate professor of medicine. "It lifts everyone’s spirits and reminds us of how precious life is."

As in previous years, Negrin and numerous staff members gave talks at the event — as did more than 30 patients who wanted to share their stories. Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer also spoke, drawing parallels between her on-court battles and the struggles of BMT patients.

"It was an amazing experience," said Wang of the reunion she attended in the past. "It was inspiring to see all of the survivors and hear from some of the people who went through what I did."

Wang’s own ordeal began after a skiing trip in February 1999. The then-31-year-old computer software engineer took a spill at the end of the day and was plagued with back pain for the next month. A trip to her doctor and a subsequent MRI uncovered something more ominous: abnormal bone marrow.

Wang was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia, and her doctor recommended a bone marrow transplant. The procedure, which is used to treat a variety of disorders, involves extracting healthy bone marrow stem cells from the patient or a donor and transfusing the cells into the patient following a series of chemotherapy or chemotherapy/radiation treatments.

The hope is that the chemotherapy will destroy the cancerous cells and that the patient’s body will accept the donated healthy cells as its own.

"Each time we give a patient a transplant, we’re picking a fight with nature," said Karl Blume, MD, professor of medicine, who founded Stanford’s adult BMT program in 1986. "If nature ran its course, the patient would not live."

Women who undergo chemotherapy typically experience menopause and become infertile, and Wang said this was one of the most difficult things for her to face. "I’ve always wanted to a large family, and we were trying to have a second child when I was diagnosed," said Wang. "We knew there was a possibility that we wouldn’t be able to have kids after my treatment, and this was a real struggle."

Wang decided to undergo in vitro fertilization and have her eggs extracted and fertilized prior to her treatment. After Amin Milki, MD, associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics, performed the extraction and froze the embryos, Wang had her bone marrow transplant, using cells from one of her brothers. She went home a month later and began her relatively quick and smooth recovery; within six months she was off of all medication and cancer-free.

Nearly three years after her transplant, Wang not only has a clean bill of health but also a second child. Last June, she underwent the second part of the IVF (a frozen embryo transfer) and became pregnant — despite having gone through menopause during chemotherapy.

"What they were able to do is amazing," said Negrin, Wang’s physician, adding how rare it is for a leukemia patient to undergo IVF successfully.

A recent move to Southern California and Wang’s hectic schedule with the baby and her 6-year-old son, Bryan, prevented her from making the trip to Palo Alto for this year’s reunion. But Wang said she is grateful for the care she received at Stanford.

"After the diagnosis, my husband and I did as much research as we could — e-mailing people and looking up literature — and everything indicated that Stanford was the ideal place to get a BMT," said Wang. "Everyday I think about how fortunate I was to be here."