SALT LAKE CITY — What do you say to the person who literally saved your life? On Thursday, a Utah woman with bone marrow cancer got that chance as she met her transplant donor for the first time.
Although a tour of the University of Utah Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine lab may not look like much, it was a real gift for Gina Poirier and Doug Wood.
“Best Christmas present ever,” Poirer said.
The two are meeting for the first time. Without Wood, Poirier wouldn’t be here.
“Every day, things that I do, I can say I did this because of him, I wouldn’t be able to, there’s no way, I wouldn’t have been able to do the things I did,” she said.
In 2017, Poirier was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer and needed a stem cell donor to live. It just so happened that a year later, Wood, from Atlanta, Georgia, signed up to be a donor.
“They called me within a couple weeks, so I mean, the timing of all of this was pretty, I mean, I didn’t really know it at the time because it was like, wow, that was fast,” Wood said.
Wood donated his blood, the lab at the University of Utah pulled from it the cells that Poirier needed, and in 2019, she received her bone marrow transplant. The two kept in touch but met Thursday for the first time.
“It’s been too long. It needed to happen,” Wood said.
“Yeah,” Poirier responded.
The meeting was a first for them and the university’s lab.
“It’s never happened, not in the time I’ve been around. I don’t think it’s ever happened here,” said Jan Pierce, senior director of the Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine Program at the University of Utah.
Poirier and Wood are grateful for each other.
“I was like, what do you say to somebody who literally saved your life?” Poirier said.
It’s not like Wood just lives around the corner, either. He traveled 1,800 miles to meet Poirier, which gives you a sense of the bond the two share even before he arrived.
“You donate and you meet that person who was the recipient, then it’s very much part of your life now, it’s pretty humbling I will say,” Wood said.
Those who were a part of the transplant at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and the University of Utah told KSL-TV moments like Thursday’s meeting are extremely rare and one they won’t soon forget.
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