TORONTO — Shari Ichelson Silverman has found her miracle. And it was all because of a cheek swab.
Shari Ichelson Silverman and her daughter Ashley-Ann
Ichelson Silverman, 34, was diagnosed with leukemia last summer and told that, without a bone marrow transplant, she would most likely die. Since then, it has been her mission to find a bone marrow donor not just for herself, but for everyone in need of a transplant.
This is how Shari’s Mission, an organization that tries to find bone marrow matches through community drives, was born.
And on Valentine’s Day, surrounded by friends, family and volunteers, Ichelson Silverman and her father, Mike Ichelson, announced that they had achieved one of their goals. Ichelson’s daughter had found a match.
“We knew for about two weeks before that, but we wanted to get everybody together because so many people have put in so much effort,” Ichelson said.
“It’s everything we’ve prayed for. Everything [Shari] has prayed for. We were very worried that we’d never find a match on time. It’s an everyday worry: am I going to live or not? Now she knows she has a chance to survive.”
Since learning about his daughter’s illness, Ichelson has been organizing drives, with the help of volunteers. At the drive, community members aged 17 to 50 are asked to swab the inside of their cheeks. All swabs are tested, and if a match is found, the person is called in for a blood test.
It will be about a year before Ichelson will know whether the successful swab was from one of his drives.
“It may not have been from ours. It could have been from Australia. We have no idea, and we won’t know for a minimum of a year,” he said, adding that, regardless of how the match was found, his daughter was ecstatic at the news.
“She has a chance to see her daughter grow up,” Ichelson said. “We’re incredulous. We’re thrilled. We’re also scared.”
While Ichelson Silverman now has a good chance of beating her cancer, the transplant is risky.
On March 4, Ichelson Silverman will begin an intensive chemotherapy treatment, and on March 10, she will receive the bone marrow transplant. If the transplant is successful, then she’ll get graft-versus-host disease, meaning that the cells in the new bone marrow will recognize the recipient cells as foreign and begin fighting them. While this is an important part of the process, it can result in severe consequences, such as the loss of her sight or the use of her tear ducts.
“She might have to be on dialysis, either temporarily or for life,” Ichelson said. “These are things we don’t know… we’re praying she’s not going to have severe long-term effects.”
Even with these risks, Ichelson Silverman’s family has been given hope. And they plan to do the same for as many people as they can.
“We are definitely continuing Shari’s Mission. We have to pay it forward,” Ichelson said, adding that he held a drive last month, from Feb. 26 to 28, at Vaughan Mills shopping centre.
“Somebody, somewhere [was] a match for Shari. We’ve got to find 870 matches for Canadians.”
Ichelson recently learned that a New York man may have found a match through Shari’s Mission.
“We’re absolutely thrilled,” he said, adding that nothing is official yet. “We didn’t expect to hear anything maybe for years. To have found something so quickly is really heartening.”
Because Ichelson Silverman is an Ashkenazi Jew, her family reached out to Toronto’s Jewish community.
“The Jewish community has shown us such tremendous love and support,” he said.
“People have come to drives for no other reason than to say, ‘I’ve had a match, and this is what I’m going through.’”
