Category: Patient Stories
Geraldine & John’s Story: Music, Mindset, and the Power of Community Geraldine and John are passionate musicians. Together, they perform in a Neil Young tribute band called Harvest Moon, a five-piece band where John is the lead singer, guitarist and…
When 58‑year‑old Brett Klau looks back on the end of 2024, it still surprises him how quickly life changed. Just days before Christmas, he was playing competitive volleyball, and around New Years he was out on the jet ski. A…
When Brett’s haematologist handed him a flyer suggesting he could consider participating in a new clinical trial, his first reaction was simple: “Why not?” He had just completed his fourth round of chemotherapy for multiple myeloma and was preparing for…
A Life Full of Service and Joy At 60 years of age and at the end of 2018, Linda retired from her career as a librarian and happily kept herself busy with volunteering and travel. She trained for and completed…
Graham Lewis insists that “fun run” is most definitely an oxymoron, and that there’s nothing fun about it, especially when the weather is cold and miserable. And cold and miserable it was when Graham completed this year, only the third…
St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney has marked a remarkable milestone: the 50th anniversary of Australia’s very first bone marrow transplant. The commemoration began with Associate Professor Anthony Dodds, who reflected on that groundbreaking moment in 1975 when the first bone marrow…
100 years of life What does 100 years of life look like after a bone marrow transplant? It looks like Lisa, Jonathon, and Kerrin — three extraordinary Australians who’ve not only survived bone marrow transplants, but have gone on to…
Jenny Nixon is no slouch. She’s a mother to two sets of twins, who she raised as a single mum from when they were six and three years old, and is a proud grandmother to four. She runs her own…
Poppy Pickett has had more than a lifetime’s worth of medical poking and prodding, with transfusion after transfusion, endless visits to hospitals and specialists, and months in isolation. And she’s only five years old. Poppy was diagnosed with Diamond-Blackfan Anaemia…
Thursday 7th November 2002 is a day Serina Dosen will never forget. It’s the day she received her new stem cells, and a second chance at life. But it’s also the day she began her “new normal” life, with a…
Meagan Clark* is a university lecturer, married, with two kids – all the usual stuff – and considers herself incredibly privileged. But despite her apparent advantages in life, she still struggled with the blows dealt to her and her family…
GATA2. It sounds like something from a SciFi movie, doesn’t it? Perhaps the name of a newly colonised planet, or a space station or something. But no. It’s a protein that regulates gene expression and it plays a key role…
You don’t expect to have to wear nappies and learn to walk again when you’ve been successfully adulting for decades. And you don’t expect to follow that up with having to watch your 19-year-old learn to walk again either. But…
Katherine Robertson, pictured in 1999, not long before her diagnosis with acute lymphocytic leukaemia. Anne Robertson Anne Robertson was a refined lady, always impeccably presented, with a love for history and family. Anne had a love of the arts enjoying…
Courtney Hughes’ pathway to her nursing career is not your average one, but then Courtney probably isn’t your average kind of girl. Courtney was leading an active life, busy working as a prison officer doing lots of physically demanding work…
“My bone marrow transplant was the worst and the best time of my life.” That’s how Jordan Lambropoulos describes her ground-breaking stem cell transplant now that she has another year of living under her belt. Bone marrow or stem cell…
Meet Sam Sheehan, an Aussie living and working in Vietnam with his partner. Sam, with his ever-positive outlook on life, put a lot of his seemingly innocent health woes down to travel bugs and a difference in health care systems,…
Arrow’s newsletter, “Transplant Talk” is going live. Join us for a series of patient webinars with expert guests covering topics such as returning to work after bone marrow/stem cell transplant, survivorship, dealing with graft v. host disease, and much more….
A woman with a cat bite walks into a medical centre… No, it’s not the start of a bad joke, but what followed for Jackie was so surreal it felt like it could have been. She had been feeling fatigued…
“How are you doing today?” It’s an innocuous question for most of us, something we ask often without really listening to the answer. But hardship can happen to anyone. “I’ll tell you on Tuesday,” was the answer I got when…