Lilly VandenBosch graduated from Hopkins High School and now is enrolled at Davenport University and wants to give back to the community.
She really means it, too. She’s come a long way, baby. And she wants to become a nurse practitioner.
It was eight years ago that Townbroadcast first published a feature story with photos, “Lily vs. Aplastic Anemia.” She was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a rare blood disorder, at the age of 7, and her life has featured numerous hospital visits, treatments and uncertainties.
Doctors at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids thought she might have leukemia, but after extensive tests, she was diagnosed with aplastic anemia.
Aplastic anemia occurs when the body stops producing enough new blood cells, leaving patients fatigued and prone to infections and uncontrolled bleeding. She was having bloody noses that wouldn’t stop and getting unexplained bruises and marks all over her body.
Medications, blood transfusions, or a bone marrow transplant are the options for those who suffer from the disease. It was a bone marrow transplant that made the biggest difference.
As she grew, Lilly. Began to ask a lot of questions about aplastic anemia and this eventually led to her choosing to take up a career as a practical nurse.
Dr. Ulrich Duffner, section chief of Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplants at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, expressed amazement over how far the now 18-year-old college freshman has come.
“It’s even weird for me to talk about it, because it seems like another lifetime ago,” Lilly told FOX 17, which recently did a feature story about her. “It seems like I’m looking into someone else’s memories. It doesn’t seem like it actually happened to me.”
After Davenport University, she hopes to work at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospita, where she received many of her treatments.
And now encourages everyone to consider signing up as bone marrow donors. Diversity increases the likelihood that patients from various ethnic and racial backgrounds will find compatible donors.
She owes her recovery to a bone marrow transplant that was engineered by Sandy Dobbs, of Germany, as donor.
Lily needed weekly blood transfusions, but not any more because of Dobbs and the Pediatric Blood and Bone Marrow Transplant Program at Spectrum Health Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital. Dobbs was identified as the only donor in the world who could help, and she has said she was glad to do it.
Lilly received manipulated T-cells, which were trained in a lab to attack the CMV virus. The trial gamble paid off. The CMV virus disappeared.
But Lilly’s body needed a boost. She was tired, weak and sick. When asked, Dobbs readily agreed to donate a second round of cells that Lilly received in May 2016.
“The combination of third-party T-cells and Sandy’s second donation finally did the trick,” mother Meg VandenBosch said. “That’s when Lilly turned the corner. No more viruses, no more transfusions, her body was finally able to thrive.”
