Sixteen years ago Nikki Coleman and I did the exact same thing, four states apart.
I did it for a guy I met, a famous guy whose daughter was dying of cancer.
I sat nights in the hospital with this man, someone I had idolized as a kid. On that last night, when the bad news arrived, he cried his eyes out.
During all of this, he arranged a bone marrow drive, and of course I signed up.
Only a fraction of the 10 million people on the National Marrow Donor Registry is African-American. I figured if I could maybe spare another human the pain and sorrow I had just witnessed, giving a blood sample and joining a list was the least of it.
Nikki Coleman was 22 then, and signed up with her parents and sisters during a drive for the cousin of a member of their Denver church. The cousin later died, a donor match having never been found.
The call arrived in July. Coleman had forgotten all about the cousin and the marrow drive. There was this baby girl with cancer, the caller said. Coleman looked like a perfect match.
They asked if she would submit to further testing.
“My first thought was the chances are slim I would be a match,” Coleman, 39, said.
For more than a month, they ran her through tests, everything from X-rays to pregnancy tests. She was a perfect match, they said. It was as if she and the baby were sisters.
If she were willing to go through with it, they would set a Sept. 10 date for surgery. They gave her some paperwork and a DVD of exactly what the procedure would be and sent her home.
“It never entered my mind, turning my back on that child and that family,” Nikki Coleman said. She could only think of her son, Kyree, 14. She would want someone to do the very same thing for him, she said.
She was accompanied last Friday morning to Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center by her parents, Terry and Sebbie Coleman, and her sisters, LaChelle, 37, and Terisha, 34.
LaChelle, who was pregnant that day 16 years ago and couldn’t sign up to be a marrow donor, did so that morning.
The doctors made two small incisions in Coleman’s back, and pulled marrow from her pelvic bone. The procedure lasted about an hour.
“To do this for a child she doesn’t know and may never meet,” Sebbie Coleman said, “I consider her to be a hero.”
Nikki Coleman was told nothing of the baby who would receive the marrow, other than she was 18 months old and African- American.
“They had already performed radiation on her to kill her blood cells, so they were really counting on me. I couldn’t back out,” Coleman said.
She returned to her job as a state tax examiner Tuesday.
“People always ask about the pain. I always say it is more stiffness than pain,” she said, “like I fell down a flight of 10 stairs on my backside.”
Of course, she says, she would one day like to meet the little girl, whose prospects with the marrow transplant are now considered to be very, very good. Meeting her, she said, will be the girl’s parents’ call to make.
She has no regrets. If she were to receive a call similar to the one last July, she would do it again, she said.
“People are saying I am a hero, but I don’t see it that way,” Coleman said. “I look at it more that I was blessed with this opportunity to help save another person’s life.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
