Donor: Joy's Story

Joy Underhill

Farmington, New York
Stem Cell Donor, 2021

I’m driving 300 miles upstate, wearing a gauze bandage, bringing home a bag of my sister’s hair. 

Meadowbrook, Huntington, Cuomo Bridge. The exits fall behind me before I stop in Monticello, where the March snow is still piled high, the edges melting. At last, I feel the pull of home, a place of broad lakes and unplanted fields, three weeks behind New York City in warmth and tulips. 

My sister needs a bone marrow transplant, her one chance for a cure. And I am her perfect match. I don’t understand the science, but I never hesitate in saying yes. Just two days prior, I was hooked up to a device that took my blood, spun out precious stem cells, and—click-click-click—returned the rest to my veins. I read a book, ate oatmeal cookies, and chatted with the nurses the whole time. 

I don’t need these cells, at least not in the numbers induced by the drug I’ve been taking for five days. At the end of the procedure, the nurse shows me a bag of filtered blood and tells me it contains nearly eight million of my stem cells.

“Your platelets are low, so don’t do anything strenuous for a day or two. They grow back quickly,” she says. 

“I guess it’s not time to get that tattoo,” I say, and we both laugh. 

Ginny needs these cells to save her life. 

After killing her bone marrow, they will infuse her with my cells, wait a couple of months, then a year, and see how well they take. There are no guarantees, but a sibling match is her best chance. 

A perfect ten, they call me. I’ve never been perfect in my life.  

Ginny and I are mismatched in so many other areas of life. 

Our political views have driven us into corners, fighting like wolverines. I read online about how to survive Christmas if the reds and blues of the family do battle. It has only gotten worse. 

She grew up navigating the nuances of high school cliques; I stayed heads-down over schoolwork. She had serial boyfriends; I spent Saturday nights with girlfriends who shared popcorn and waited for phone calls. She followed her husband to a Manhattan apartment; I met a local boy and raised my family in our hometown. 

Still, when we spend time together, we stay up late unravelling the questions of our childhood, spinning through stories to make sense of the decisions our parents made and the ones they didn’t. She can look at me and know I understand. I can look at her as a witness to those fundamental and troubled years. 

My sister is practical and direct. I’m sentimental and work hard not to offend, but there are moments when we find ourselves on the same page. 

I’ve collected a house full of stuff I can’t let go of: our mother’s childhood tea set; the WWI medals of a great-uncle; a pair of electric scissors I used as a child. My sister downsized each time she moved, so now her life is spare, meaningful, and not tucked in dark boxes to collect time. I need the comfort of the past; she needs to shed that which no longer serves her. 

When we sorted through our mother’s house, we came upon a box of things Mom couldn’t part with: old report cards; construction paper valentines in faded pink; letters from our aunts. My sister peeked into a white envelope and passed it to me. In it was my black ponytail from sixty years ago, still held together with a rubber band. I instantly smelled Breck Crème Rinse and felt my mother’s gentle hands, brushing my hair one hundred strokes a night.

Ginny tells me a story I’ve never heard. When she had chemo 30 years ago, she felt a shift on her scalp when she was washing her hair. As she was blow-drying afterwards, it fell out all at once and flew around, a whirlwind of sudden loss. She didn’t know which was worse: looking at her bald head or cleaning up her fine hair from every crevice in the room. She didn’t want that to happen again. 

When Ginny told me she had asked her neighbor to cut off her hair, I asked if I could stay. She didn’t answer, but time got away from us, and there was Kim at the door, scissors and shaver in hand. She asked if she could pray for Ginny, and the three of us held hands and cried. Soon, Ginny’s long blond hair was falling to the kitchen floor. 

This time, I am her witness—to the courage it takes to choose a wig ahead of time, put on lipstick, and allow me to take a selfie of us by the beach on this, the day before she goes into the hospital. 

I ask my sister if I can save her hair. 

“What for?” 

I want to spread it in the bushes back home. “The robins will line their nests with it,” I say. It seems a fitting ritual on the threshold of spring, a petition for my cells to secure themselves in her body and make her healthy again. Only one in five patients like her survive the first year. 

She shakes her head. “You’re whacked.” 

Ultimately, I end up with her hair. She doesn’t need it or want it. But I need it to cement a new chapter for us both. Kim gathers her fine hair into a bag, and I tuck it into my purse. It is feather light and heavy as the thoughts that will darken the miles driving upstate: Roscoe, Homer, Auburn. 

But before I leave, I drive over the Queensborough Bridge, its off-white paint peeling and brilliant in the weak sunshine. I’m meeting my sister and son in Astoria for lunch. 

We sit outside a ramen noodle restaurant. Parking spots have been turned into plywood and plastic seating during the winter months of the pandemic. We take off our masks to sip rich bone broth and peel tender meat from pork ribs. 

As I pull out from my parking space, Ginny waves at me and says, almost as an afterthought, “You know, all those disagreements, they don’t mean a thing. It’s a clean slate from now on.”   

On transplant day, I take her hair outside and spread it in the bushes. 

I wait for the birds to fly away with blond strands in their beaks, but the wind takes it all. I hear my sister’s voice: Well what did you expect? 

A few days from now, I will be left with two tiny scars on my chest, and she will lose the stubble of hair she has left. In a few months, she’ll learn if those eight million cells are doing the work her body no longer can. And in a year, if all goes well, we’ll be digging our toes into the cold sand outside her condo, the same blood nourishing us as sisters, our boundaries giving way to bonds. 

Joy Underhill is a retired business writer who enjoys traveling, photography, learning piano, and, of course, writing. Her essay won first place in the Big Brick Review essay contest.