Episode 7: Bree Dollar - Gift of Life - a story of 2X cancer survivor

Join us as we talk to Bree Dollar a young 2X survivor of an acute form of leukemia on how she dealt with the physical and mental struggles of having the cancer, and how she met her bone marrow donor, whose selfless act gave her a new lease on life.

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Transcript

hardship is so easy to fall into but joy is also really easy to find my name is Brianna I go with Bree By Bree and I am a two-time cancer survivor

[Music]

Welcome to our show and um so how did you find out that you have the the leukemia I think it's called the acute myeloy leukemia is that right did I get that right yes so my story to diagnosis was a little difficult um it was my senior year of high school so I was 17 years old and I was my first day of my senior I actually came to school feeling really sick and I left early that day I went to Urgent Care and they ended up telling me and my parents that I have a stroke throat infection which was fairly common for me um but after that it didn't really get better instead it got a lot worse I ended up over the next two or three months going to urgent care seven or eight times um and just progressively started to feel really awful I was struggling you know just walking short distances that we ended up going to a different Urgent Care out of town and we got the blood results the next day and they told us to go to the ER they took me to the ICU as quickly as possible in the next day they told me that I had to keep here ah okay what happened after the doctor discovered that you do have AML did they check you in immediately then your treatment started right away can you share with us what the treatment looks like so my treatment began even before they actually found out I had AML um so when I was in the ICU in the doctor at HLA it was most definitely leukemia they went ahead the next day and they did surgery to place a central line in my chest which is kind of like an IV but it's more permanent um and then they also um did a bone marrow biopsy they did a spinal tap to see if it was in the spinal fluid and then they did some other tests as well you're in the hospital into your accounts are covered we found out a few days later that was am out which my doctor said suspected um and they went through that treatment so that treatment was over 30 days in the hospital um with a lot of complications and then I would go home for a week and then they would kind of rinse and repeat and the days of chemotherapy were between about six or ten days and then usually about 30 days in the hospital just recovering yeah I mean everywhere else I I have seen people who went through chemotherapy there were a lot of side effects can you share some of that what was it like the side effects I struggle with the most were like nausea and vomiting symptoms um and something called mutasitis it's basically like little sores that cover your mouth and it can cover your intestinal tract and I had those a lot so it was on pretty hefty painkillers and there were times so I couldn't eat or drink because of that and then sometimes I just didn't have an appetite so some might be Nutrition a lot um and then I did get a few infections um my second round of chemotherapy I got something called H pylori um which just causes like a lot of nausea vomiting and and other symptoms and then my last round I ended up getting a superbug which sent me in the subject I have seen on some of your post or some write-up regarding to you have some pretty awesome team of doctors and nurses they even I believe celebrated some special event in your life even though you're in the hospital receiving treatment could you share a little bit about that yes so my nurses and my doctors were my rock when I was going through treatment you know I had incredible parents that were with me 24 7. um and I had friends come to visit sometimes but really I mean when you're in the hospital for days and days and days the people you're around them Justice the nurses and my nurses and my doctors were so incredible um you know they would play card games with me when I was so bored I would you know when you're in the hospital room or even just around a ward there's not much to do so you get you get really more so sometimes I'd be more almost to tears and they'd sit with me and play a card game or something and they really they kept my mental Amina up during a lot of it and um when I did go that last route when I went to septic shock I had been really excited because we planned for me to go to my prom um and even at one point after I went into shock it was about a week before my prom that I got back on the unit um because I did have to go to ICU um so I had gotten back on the unit and they had talked about giving me a day pass to go to prom uh but I ended up getting another fever um the Wednesday on Saturday uh so they ended up just a bunch of my nurses and my amazing um uh Child Life Specialists they end up planning prom for me on the in on the floor so they took the infusion room and they used like the oxygen to blow up balloons and they um they created a really really special memory for me and honestly I think it was better than going to actual prom it was a really really incredible moment for me it is amazing um to hear that the health caretaker that watch over you not only are they professional knowing at their trades but they will have the love and the capacity to take the time really to become your second family I mean some of your most most uh vulnerable times so that's great to see that there are good people around us like that now I'm kind of curious you know now what went through your mind as you going through the treatment um what was your outlook on life at that moment when I was first diagnosed I was really I was so sick that nothing would have surprised me if that doctor had said I don't think okay um so I remember when him coming in he was he asked me how I was taking it so well and I was just sitting there like well I'm here um and that's kind of how it was for the first two rounds I think I was so just sick that I wanted to just feel better but then kind of the isolation really set in when I was sick wasn't as sick and I wanted to do things and I was feeling really lonely um but really it was it was my nurses my family that just it felt like this was just my new normal every day just had to be a Mother's Day and I really just can think about my surroundings I just really kind of try to enjoy everything that I got to enjoy yeah you're sort of living the moment because you don't know what's going to come next and you eventually did reach your first remission this is after how long of treatment so I started treatment in November um okay and then ended in May so it was about six or seven books so you could see a gradual improvement over time or yeah see that does that bring some encouragement to you as well when you see some positive results after the first round I didn't go into tuition I was in near remission but I didn't and we were still struggling with the um with the cancer of my spine and so after the second round when I finally did get into remission it was actually kind of discouraging the initial thought was this should have already happened um with AML it's really about getting it rid of it as fast as possible and then going through treatment to make sure that it stays that way it sounded like it's up and down up and down it's not a there's a bit of a roller coaster ride um yeah to get there and it was in a uh uh kind of just coaster route and you know it's gonna Tom there's a bit of a struggle as well um so what was it like then after remission of returning back to normal the first time so I graduated high school about I think two weeks after I came home the last time it was even two weeks um and it was just kind of like starting in this new world um now you're an adult but you didn't really need to go through the Milestones the senior year that everyone else did um so I hadn't applied to any schools I hadn't um you know like for scholarships I hadn't really done any of the senior year things I talking with my parents had decided that I was going to take a semester off that summer I spent really just focusing on myself I met a lot of great people I gotta go to cancer Camp um and then we got to go to Colorado uh with the cancer camp and I did a bunch of things for myself um and really felt like I was kind of finding myself again yeah and then uh that Paul I applied for the spring you know it's all colleges and I decided to go closer to home and I actually got a job that I was really really enjoyed I started working as a number one dispatcher and I just kind of felt like I was finally kind of finding that footing of who I wanted to be as America yeah okay so I noticed at least for your first return some of the people you choose to spend more time with are are people that you know through the cancer experience um so is Jared more is there a community form while you were at hospital or as a cancer patient that that you build some bonds with some other people sharing similar Journey so during my first experience the I think the oldest patient that came in was 15. but the only one I really saw much of I think she was 12. so I think everyone was very much drastically younger than me and very different stages of their life so I actually connected to the parents a lot more than words connecting to the children I see um so I would I would sit and I would have full-blown conversations with people's moms about what their children were going through and um it I think that was part of the isolation too was I didn't really know that many people my age or I didn't at least didn't get to really talk with them or get to know them very well and I did have someone reach out um this girl so during the entire first um time I was just texting her uh she had been through cancer three times at that point she also had leukemia but she had a much rare form than I did um so we would talk a lot during treatment I think that really helped and when I went to cancer Camp I made two really close friends who both had had like dancers then you had to relapse I believe what six months later after your first remission yeah it was about six or seven months what was it like to to um to receive that news it was really difficult um when we finished treatment there was some indication that relapse was possible we had had a small relapse scare right after I finished treatment and that had shown that it's minor residual disease but as the months went on I think your thought is less and less brisk and so I started having symptoms and stuff I just started work and everything and I was like thinking that was just me kind of stressing my body again really like okay we're doing things now and so my my only really sent those were back pain and a little bit of fatigue so I don't think I was completely expecting it but when I started to see the trend in my blood work I wanted answers more than anything I was just waiting for an answered and mulling over me for about a few weeks it didn't become real that it could be a relapse until one of my friends relapsed about two weeks before I found out okay and I think those few weeks were probably really really difficult because I was sitting there waiting and waiting for news um and when we went back to the doctor um to get more work done did not come back good um they sent it off uh for further testing and when I got the phone call I knew what the phone call was and I wouldn't answer it and they called my dad um well I was just like sitting in the kitchen making a sandwich and um I overheard it and I was just sitting there just hearing his side and I just kind of dropped the bottle and it was really difficult to process yeah I don't think I was really scared of a bad outcome the first time but the second time it just felt real like something potentially really bad could happen and I hadn't really considered that as much until that moment um and it was just it was just kind of stunning I just felt like I was in the state of disbelief I imagine the second time around you understand the gravity of what this means even from the first time and when you came back so this is the doctor decided to take a different course of action this time right instead of chemotherapy yeah the protocol for ammo patients when they relapse is the new chemotherapy until the patient is in remission and then do above it so we decided to go that route would that bring us to the organization called Gift of Life how did you connect with them and and I think ultimately they they found a donor for you tell us about that so I live in more rural area the treatment center I went to was not a transplant center so when I went I had to go five hours to go see a transplant specialist and go see that doctor so when I went and saw the doctor and we had talked about transplant they're like okay we're gonna find you so really I mean it's really just from the jersey look on something on the international registry to see if there's matches and I was really lucky visual that I had several matches on the registry um so from that process during my first round we were told um you know we've secured a donor the donor is good to donate so the doctor knew about the registry and they they they processed you through it and you didn't know what mechanism is in play to find you a donor but later on he did find out he was gift of life then when there is a match what has to happen after that for the bone marrow transplant to take place so on my side I had to finish chemotherapy and I had to get back shirt and that came therapy is really wrong for me and then you go through a bunch of testing you do all this to see if you're ready and then you go through the process of getting it uh but on the donor side they are also going through testing they're going through like deciding if they want to donate they do conformatory typing just to see if they're a good enough match and that's when we were once they do that I think that's when we were told that I had a match and then they do a second stage where they go in for a full exam we ended up being told that my first match that I had was not going to donate for whatever reason they never told us why but then I was I was really lucky that I did have multiple watches so they had found another one so luckily once we knew we did have a donor and my Center had cleared me then we went up to Atlanta and we went ahead with a transplant so in your mind what went through your mind of course there's probably some discouragement when you find out your first match donor not willing to donate for whatever reason but the second one did what went through your mind when you find out about the second one I think it was a lot of emotions if was um only during my first round of chemotherapy I had a friend the one who relapsed two weeks before I did he wasn't able to find it um he likely wouldn't have made it to transplant it either way uh but he did get a kidney infection and he passed during that treatment and I think when I heard that the original donor fell through there's a lot of emotions of fear um because I just kind of watched him go through that but it was very quickly that you know they had told us that you have a second match and I think it was a lot of emotions of relief gratitude but also the little guilt that I would get this gift and not only one person but two people yeah I I imagined a feeling must be fairly complex yeah I had a chance looked at uh Tony Joe's uh uh website and story behind how he donated he put it pretty simply oh it just you know gave me knocked me out and um and do the procedure I mean I woke up and you know so he sort of downplayed the process but knowing that you had to fly somewhere lying on operational table for them to trivialize you basically and knock you out to to pull stuff on your spine well it's not from your spine oh it's not from your spine wasn't funny from it's from your hip bone okay well tell me more about the details so because obviously this is for future donor uh knowledge okay okay so there's two types of donors 90 um are going to donate something called blood stem cells usually you're a tone Center and yeah it's kind of like a resort they get like six or seven up I mean it doesn't usually take that long but okay I think it's like four to seven hours and it's just like donating platelets or plasma where they take the blood from one arm filter it through the immature together what Tom did um is a little bit more rare uh it's only done about 10 and it's usually only asked for small children so donor said on April mayor like he did usually go under under General Anastasia it doesn't really scar you might have like a little pinpoint scar so it's a non-invasive procedure and uh it's tapping to the bone marrow of your hip is that right and um is there any side effect for the donor afterwards so they typically feel like a little um tired uh maybe weak in the area so they do ask you know when you're donating bone marrow not to work out too much um so there might be some hip or back pain but typically that goes away within a few days if you experienced much of it okay so let me see if I can summarize it and correct me if I'm wrong again this is to summarize for people who are thinking about donating but a little bit afraid you say majority of time is more of a platelets and this is not too different than you're typically giving blood but in the rare cases where Tony went through it's through the hip bone minimally invasive invasive procedure and is it a day is it an outpatient thing it's outpatient it's outpatient so they they get your bone marrow and you kind of go to sleep a little bit and you wake up and you're done you take it easy for a little bit is there a part important part that I'm missing not really okay well then that's um frankly at least for me it takes away a lot of the fear um I do think this part of the education is important for our viewer or listener to understand so it's not a it's not as scary painful but yet the outcome and the impact that this procedure can make is life-giving it's something that people really ought to consider thank you for educating us on that I know I know you ended up at least after your second remission you join force or begin to work at gift of life so after I met Tony or while I met Tony I got to meet some campus ambassadors and some people from gift of life and I began doing uh some like Sim calls and then the next fall I actually joined the campus ambassador program that I've been in that program for three years now yeah I saw you you actually made a little video for Gift of Life about your story a few of those yeah that's right and I saw one that was very touching but I do want to come back to a big event that you managed to uh to allow you to finally meet your donor I believe is usually a No-No until both party agrees can you tell me about that process and how do you guys meet and what happened at the meeting December I got a message from Gift of Life and there's a lot of rules and laws surrounding uh donation you actually can't meet your donor until a year after treatment um it was kind of a a weird thing because they were like we want this to happen but we have to get special permission for it to happen because the event was a Nashville Predators game he had consented I had consented but we the event was actually a week before one year so they had to get special permission so we could have made on that for a little bit more paperwork okay by the way just for our audience just to make sure they understand Predator is the mascot right of yes yes sorry yeah no it's the name of the it's a professional hockey team okay so you guys met up at a hockey game yes we met a at a puppy it was very funny um so they flew us up to Nashville they flew me and my mama and my dad drove up when we got to Nashville that was when I got to like meet people from the um Gift of Life program I got to meet people who um were in the campus ambassador program at the annual Bell and we um just really connecting with them I think inspired me to really get more involved with the organization and just their mission and how everyone is it was really um a great experience and the day of was kind of funny because um we were in these t-shirts and we did like I did an interview before and I had this t-shirt on that it was like the sworn shirt that said life saved and they had given me a predator's jersey in the back of it said Gift of Life um there was a woman with gift life around me and she was like trying to make sure that we didn't see each other with their shirts on before the meeting um they did an introduction on the like big hockey screen and so they they did this whole introduction so you but you knew you were going to you going there to meet your donor it's just that it's the anticipation who is that In This Crowd um and when's it gonna happen yeah yeah so after you saw Tony Joe what happened it was kind of a rush because no one had told me we were doing interviews this whole day um and I already done one I wasn't prepared for and then ads were like coming out they like did like one on paper and it was like cool whatever but then we're like next thing I know we're on uh ESPN so I didn't know this guy like I just pumped him

so yeah so to get to know you moment is very short right yeah yes yes and you know it was kind of rushed right we didn't really get it to to really do more than um you know watch the game you know it's a lot of hockey Stadium you can't really get a conversation in like out of some of his friends um we shared our contact information and since I was in Nashville we ended up uh and we had extended our stay a little bit more and we got to um go out to dinner and really get to know each other we did escape room together I think during the escape room was a good way to get to know something

oh we did not finish because [ __ ] so much um but once I I really got to know him it was he's an amazing person um we're still really close we talk all the time um and we like to really celebrate Milestones together yeah he does seem like a really amazing person that I had a chance to look at he's working in pharmaceutical now and uh you know again helping others oh yeah he runs clinical trials yeah now this is a great story right because you go to hockey game and hug broke out and then you get to introduce your donor and uh I think it's a wonderful story of someone willing to step out their comfort zone you know take the trouble to donate no bomero uh the impact is so huge that that allow you to you know reach your second remission so question is what was the process like after bone marrow is it just all you know just wonderful from this point on so my bone marrow transplant was really difficult okay I ended up getting severe complications I had um something called you know inclusive disease so basically the veins to my liver flux and my um body just took on a ton of fluid um so that led to a lot of damage of ICU for a while um colossal on memory I also had something called acute references disease so it's basically where the transplanted cells start attacking um the recipient's body it took me a long time to get out of the hospital in the hospital for about 60 days post-transplant and then you have to stay close to the hospital for a while so I was there until day 120 and then shortly after they found out I had something called I had graft versus histies but I had the chronic version um and that affected lots of different parts of my body that still impacts me to this day and it was something that took a long time even today you know there's a lot of damage from the chemo from the transplant along with the grafters associates I also have really bad neuropathy um from chemotherapy so I really have lost a lot of mobility in my left leg and then I have something called hemochromatosis so I have a lot of blood transfusions um so your body really just holds on to the iron from those um so I have a very heart uh deposits of iron all over my body my liver uh and my blood and so I go weekly still to the oncologist to get treatment for that yeah so it's not a not a cakewalk even even with the transplant it doesn't end as easily as I think people does a cancer bummer transplant or anything you know um I think people think once I ring the bell you know that I was better but it's a long process that will probably last for the rest of my life but I am really grateful to you know have these issues because it's that I am still here so that's definitely a a very positive way of looking at life so just kind of share with the audience after you went through all that um did you have some life lesson that you sort of go yeah you know I went through all of this experience you know this is kind of what it means to me and this is kind of how I see the world like my worldview change my view about people about life in general um and uh you know what how's your outlook on life what's your I knew yours you're in school right now I mean like Ali you're saving like uh in a college or a classroom or or a study room talking to me right now uh you're you're you're an engaging life right now and not just life now but you're preparing for the future so tell me about that I think it was a really gradual process and I think it's been really up and down process of kind of figuring out what my experience has been in my life kind of discovering myself after cancer um I've talked to a less buyers and I think survivorship is one of the hardest parts of cancer you know I think when you're going through it it's very easy to kind of just get in this mindset of you know this is what's happening and you have to go day by day and it's kind of this necessary necessity to keep going um but I think it it really just when especially when you know I I kind of laugh at the fact that you know I ring the bell in September 2019 and that was my doctor was like you don't have to wear a mask anymore you can go in public again and then we went straight to Beethoven yeah and it kind of yeah had to like go through that whole process of I was extremely need to compromised it had to be um and I just for the entirety of 2020 I was one of your suppressions uh so I was um you know in a very uh vulnerable state with covet going on so I was incredibly isolated again um but I I I think there were things that just made it easier and made me start learning what the experience was I think it was mostly like I started connecting with other cancer survivors online you know me and my two best friends talked a lot during the pandemic and as I started to to go on I think you know um I started to understand and kind of have this feeling that um I wanted to get back getting involved with kids of Life helped me start that process I was doing a lot for how I felt like I needed in treatment and feeling um trying to give that to other people so I kind of took on like a bomb role in my uh group chat um okay I said because someone calls me the group well all right and then um I decided I want to go back to school that was something that you know I kind of felt like my relapse had taken away from you was the opportunity to get to go to school um even my my first treatment you know that took away my opportunity finished my senior year of high school so I was really just trying to get through and finish what I had wanted so I started full backup in 2020 and it was going really well then 2021 actually I lost my best friend and she passed away from uh complications of her treatment right and I think that really sent me into an experience where I didn't know what I wanted I kindly started to feel like I was I was finding my path and I thought really bad Survivor skill and I felt like I had to do everything I felt like proving I had to prove like why I made it why I had gone through with cancer and why I had survived and so many of my friends had um throughout 2022 I lost I think a total of around a dozen friends in 2022 um and I just kind of reached my breaking point I ended up leaving school but I left um I took a job somewhere else so that I could just kind of get away from things yeah and I think that really just just made me realize I had gotten so low on the bottom and I wasn't taking care of myself I wasn't doing things that I wanted to do I was doing things that other people were telling me would make me successful or make be good for others my best friend uh wouldn't want me to be sad doing all this stuff for her um you know her mom had told me during her funeral like it's your turn to pass the torch and I think I thought for a while that that torch was changing the world um but I think that torture just living the life they would have wanted and just living joy and giving that joy to others um and I don't think I was really giving toward others when I was so sad because I wasn't happy and I had nothing to give um so I I really just focused the last few months of finding myself again and doing things that if that that also make me happy and yeah it's been a lot more you know cancer related for me um I've been advocating and I'm studying Public Health okay yeah to wrap up though I want to understand to couple of audience one is to other cancer patients who may be going through challenging situation right now what would be some advice from you to help them get through what they're going through now it's so hard because I think so many places tell you you know you fight just get through it you know you're so inspirational and some days you feel like a fraud because it's like you're just sitting there terrified on your mind not being able to do anything you're like I'm not fighting I'm not operational there's something inspirational about this um and it's really like you have to feel it you have to let yourself feel bad and and lean on people around you that you do have you know Community was so important to me um other cancer survivors have been really like what has got me through to today the memories I have of treatment a lot of them are really great I would sit in the teen room all the time and like watch my favorite show and that is a memory that I have and I think it's it's about creating this good memories so that you can get through and they don't need to be these big things that you do they need to small things like you do for yourself you're still young life has thrown a lot at you but you survive and and um you're kind of planning for your future you're going to school that's um I think for many people especially those who are going through similar situation processes you are are looking for uh Inspirations and um and wisdom that you have shared today I want to thank you for sharing all that and even for those of us who are um not going through the exact process but you know everyone had their low point and struggles or challenges in their life and go through it and hang tough right and like I said enjoy at the small moment build memory why where you are those are just great wisdom I want to thank you for coming on our show your story is inspiring at least it helped people to look at their life differently maybe even living it differently and the life through things that you you dealt with it and you live it the best you can with the the things that was given to you and now you're in remission so I wish you the best of future and we would love to stay in touch with you to learn more about your journey because it doesn't end here there's more much more to go yes I am so thankful that you had me on and I'm glad I get to share my story with the world and I hope that people do take something from it you know I I really just want emphasize you know hardship is so easy to fall into but it it's Joy is also really easy to find just being able to come on here and get a share um that and get to talk about it it was a really great experience and I can't wait to share my future with you all as well yes we look forward to it and that brings us to the end of another exciting episode of hello world please support our podcast by hitting the Subscribe button also don't forget to smash that like your likes will help our podcast reach more awesome people like you lastly tap that notification Bell to receive instant alert whenever we drop in a new episode we can't wait to see you again on our next episode until then keep on being a positive force in this world