She belongs to only one percent of stem cell donors who were once called: Nikki van der Kallen from Eindhoven. She became Stam cell donor after a call from the leukemia-deceased PSV press chief Thijs Slegers. Just before his death, he made a call to recruit donors.
The call from Slegers hit Nikki and she signed up as a stem cell donor. Last May she gave someone a chance of life thanks to this registration.
Shortly after Nikki had registered, someone from her direct circle became seriously ill: acute leukemia. As a result, she experienced the disease and the donation process up close. “Unfortunately, there was no match from the World Bank, so they had to look for a match within the family, sick as he was.”
“When I hear this, I really think: why isn’t everyone registered as a donor?”
“Eventually he found someone, but the disease and the process of searching a donor made me very happy that I was a donor,” says Nikki. “I felt so strong then: if he hadn’t found anyone, he would have just been dead now. So why isn’t the whole world donor?”
Nikki was called two years after her registration. “You might be a match,” she heard. “That took a while,” she says. “The chance that if you have registered, you will really be called up, is only 1 percent.”
After a medical inspection, Nikki turned out to be suitable for really donating. “I was so busy with the right match, that I forgot that the medical examination could also say that I had something among the members myself.”
The donation went through the blood, the most common way to donate. Five days before the procedure, Nikki had to give himself injections, so that her body started to produce more stem cells. “That was actually the scariest. You really have to cross a psychological limit to put a needle in your own belly. But it didn’t hurt.”
On the fifth day she reported to the Radboudumc Hospital in Nijmegen. “You sit still for four to six hours with two arms stretched. One needle removes the blood from one arm and that goes through a machine that filters out the stem cells and the plasma. Through your other arm it comes back to your body.”
It is a long seat, but absolutely to do, according to Nikki. The next day she felt exhausted. “Your heart has to work very hard to pump the blood through the machine, so it feels like you have walked a marathon,” she laughs. “But everything was not too bad.”
After donating, she was told that the one who received the blood was a woman in about the same age category as herself: 30 to 40 years. “That touched me, I realized that it could have been the other way around, that I had needed the stem cells.” Nikki says she still regularly stands with the woman and hoping she made it.
The answer to the question, “Why are there no more donors?”, Nikki thinks he can give: “I think many people think it is very scary, think the treatment is very drastic, but I thought it was better than expected,” she says. “I would do it again tomorrow.”
Thanks to actions and stories such as those of Nikki and Thijs Slegers, more and more people are registering as a Stam cell donor. “Many people think it is very drastic, but that is not so bad. And yes, everyone will probably experience it differently, but I can tell everything is not too bad. And you only know if you have one match Are and for that you have to register first. “
Paul van Tatenhoven
The fact that Nikki met stem cell donation was due to PSV press chief Thijs Slegers, but that she actually registered by his colleague Paul van Tatenhoven. Since Thijs got sick, he has been committed to Matchis, even when he also got cancer.
Paul has since climbed Tour de France-Bergen to raise money for the Matchis Foundation, the Dutch Center for Stam Cell donors. On Friday he stood at the foot of the Col du Semnoz that he is going to run. On his shirt he carries two names of people he wants to honor: Thijs and Nikki.