Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 8, 1994 TAG: 9410200021
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Lydle saved Tickle's life two years ago, but until July 31, they never had set eyes on each other.
Tickle, 23, was diagnosed with chronic myelocytic leukemia in January 1991. Her only chance for a cure was a bone marrow transplant.
But her doctors discovered that no one in her family was a good enough genetic match for her, and a search of a worldwide directory of potential donors also came up with nothing.
Without a good match, Tickle ran an enormous risk of dying despite the treatment. Desperate to save her life, her family contacted the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, where the transplant technique was invented more than 25 years ago.
The center had access to another list of donors, and Lydle, who turned out to be as perfect a match for Tickle as possible, was on it.
Lydle, 39, had signed up to become a bone marrow donor in 1986, at the urging of his wife, Janice, who also is a registered donor.
Janice Lydle previously had worked for the local newspaper, and through connections there, heard about the Anthony Nolan Trust, a charitable organization that finds, registers, tests and maintains a directory of potential bone-marrow donors. The Trust makes nearly 200 matches every year, Lydle said.
When Lydle heard he had been matched with someone, "I couldn't believe it," he said, but as the time for his donation drew closer, he worried that he might have an accident before the operation could take place.
It was important for him to donate, he said, because when he was a child, he had an accident that almost took his life. He thinks he was "given a second chance" and helping someone else was "a natural progression."
Besides, he said, "What if it had been my wife or my daughter?"
He went into a hospital on a Saturday to have the marrow drawn from his hip and left a few days later, slightly stiff and sore but feeling no worse than he might "after a long day of sport," he said.
The marrow was flown to Seattle on the Concorde. It was infused into Tickle's bloodstream, and she began the long process of accepting it.
Two years later, Tickle's doctors say she is doing fine. Because her own defective marrow was purposely destroyed to allow the transplant to take hold, Lydle's donated marrow considers Tickle's body to be a foreign invader, rather than the other way around.
So, as with most transplant patients, she has had some problems with rejection, and she has to be careful not to catch cold or do anything that will lower her resistance. But in three more years, she said, if she stays as healthy, her doctors will pronounce her cured.
Tickle and the Lydles waited so long to meet because when a donor is found for someone, Janice Lydle explained, the two parties must wait one year before they can find out the identities of the other. "It's so you don't get emotionally involved," she said.
But Tickle and the Lydles did keep in touch through a third party, "just to find out how she was getting on," Janice Lydle said.
A few days before Christmas last year, when the waiting period was over, Tickle called the Lydles to thank Jim for what he had done.
The first conversation was "very stilted," Lydle said, because they were strangers. But after several more calls, letters and a package of Christmas gifts, the ice was broken, and Tickle invited Jim, Janice, and their 6-year-old daughter, Sarah, to visit her family in Salem.
The Lydles never had thought of visiting the United States, they said. Although they had made short visits to France and Belgium, Jim is a delivery driver, and there was not enough money even to consider such a trip.
A few months ago, however, a London newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, heard about the story and offered to pay for the family's trip in exchange for pictures and a story. The Lydles readily agreed, and they arrived in the United States on July 31, with reporters and photographers in tow.
Tickle's mother, Blanche, "said she felt she knew us before we got here," Lydle said. After meeting Tickle, he said, "I feel like I'm her big brother. I feel very protective of her."
They spent their two weeks here sightseeing on the Blue Ridge Parkway, at Explore Park and in Charlottesville.
Sarah didn't really understand why they were here, Lydle said, but she had a great time, and jokingly nicknamed Tickle "Bone" and Lydle "Marrow."
Tickle and Lydle say there is now a special bond between them. But as far as interests and activities go, they have very little in common except for their work with bone marrow donation.
Although they are both reserved and publicity-shy, they frequently make appearances at bone marrow registration drives on their respective sides of the Atlantic. They say that telling their stories helps encourage people to become donors. They also work to raise money to pay for tissue typing, an expensive procedure that usually is charged to the donor.
For both families, working to recruit more donors has become "an obsession," Janice Lydle said.
Proportionally, there are far fewer potential donors registered in the United States than in England, and Lydle said he found it incredible that with all of the people in the United States, Tickle's donor had to be found so far away.
"I believe somewhere, everybody has a perfect match," Lydle said.
Besides making appearances for The Marrow Donor Center of the Virginias in Roanoke, Tickle also has helped form a support group for people who are waiting for transplants and their families. Although some of the meetings are informational, some are just for fun, and "we have a ball," she said. The group meets on the third Thursday of every month at the Lewis-Gale Oncology Center.
As for Lydle, "I feel quite [a sense of] achievement," he said.
by CNB