Braving Covid threat, woman travels 2,400 km to help sister fight cancer

Debeshwari was informed on April 7 about the improvement in her sister’s condition. The family decided to wait a week, expecting the lockdown to be lifted.

The lingering threat of Covid-19 failed to dissuade forty-nine-year-old Debeshwari CH from travelling over 2,409 kilometres to help her sister. She was determined to be in Gurugram to donate bone marrow for her sister’s transplant, but little did she expect to undertake a four-day car journey to reach the city from Imphal, Manipur.

Under the lockdown, only two people are allowed to travel in a car but the family received permission for five — two drivers and three family members — as they had to cover a long distance. (Aalok Soni/HT file photo. Representative image)

She reached the National Capital Region (NCR) from Imphal in Manipur on April 22 for the donation. Her sister, CH Ningolee, 55, was admitted to Fortis Memorial Research Institute (FMRI) in the last week of January to undergo treatment for acute myeloid leukaemia, a type of blood cancer where excess production of immature white blood cells affects normal blood production.

“She has high-risk cancer, where the mortality is 100% if a bone marrow transplant is not done. We had to get her to remission — less than 5% of the leukaemia cells surviving — before a transplant could be done. Her first two chemotherapy failed, but she responded well to the third one. The lockdown was already underway when we informed her family that she was in a condition to undergo a transplant,” said Dr Rahul Bhargava, Institute of Blood Disorders and Bone Marrow Transplant, FMRI.

Vilina L, Debeshwari’s daughter, said, “We had booked flight tickets for April 15. However, by April 13 or so, there was news about an extension of the lockdown, so we approached the state government. We asked them if my mother could hitch a ride on the cargo planes, but we did not get the permission. That is when we tweeted out and received a lot of support from the public and government agencies.”

Under the lockdown, only two people are allowed to travel in a car but the family received permission for five — two drivers and three family members — as they had to cover a long distance. The doctors gave Ningolee another round of chemotherapy to ensure she remained healthy till her family arrived.

“Because of the lockdown, there weren’t any hotels or restaurants open on the way either. We had to map the travel meticulously, planning all stops. The district authorities got in touch with the local police and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), who arranged for our stay in hotels and guest houses on the way. We were scared and anxious about travelling such a long distance, especially through the hilly terrains of the North East, but the authorities met us at every step of the way, checking in on us,” said Vilina.

She said that lunch was provided by NGOs along the way.

Upon reaching Gurugram on April 22, Debeshwari underwent a Covid-19 test and tested negative on Saturday. From today, she will receive injections to prepare her for the donation. The injections force the blood-forming cells into the blood, which is then collected by applying apheresis — a process in which a machine separates the components of the blood, collects the required cells and pushes the rest back into the body.

She is an allogenic donor, meaning that she is a genetic match for her sister.

“We had counselled the family about the risk of undergoing a transplant during the Covid-19 pandemic. First, there was a risk to the family members who would be travelling to the hospital and second, to the patient who might be susceptible to infections. However, the risk of the disease was more than that of Covid-19 and the family decided to proceed with the treatment,” said Dr Meet Kumar, consulting haematologist and bone marrow transplant physician at the hospital.