Southeast Man Saves Seattle-Area Woman

LoHud.com 5/2/09

Paul Castle, a New York City firefighter, has saved a few lives during his time on the job. Be it administering CPR or using a defibrillator, the member of Engine 63 in the Bronx said it's "been a team effort."

But he can claim one solo save, a selfless decision that changed the life of a woman and her family from a Seattle suburb. Donor and recipient describe Castle and Annette Bjorkman, but Bjorkman doesn't subscribe to such clinical talk.

"Who can say 'I met the person that saved my life,' " Bjorkman said on a recent afternoon at Castle's Southeast home. "Without Paul, I wouldn't be here."

Bjorkman and her husband, David, a Boeing machinist, were at the end of a six-day visit to New York. Their journey - one cloaked in worry, uncertainty, sadness and joy - began in August 2004 in her doctor's office.

Sitting on Castle's deck this week, Bjorkman, 53, alternated between tears and smiles. Recounting the summer of 2004 - when acute myelogenous leukemia returned to ravage her blood cells - was a time for tears. Remission had lasted a little more than a year.

"(My doctor) said, 'Yeah, it's back.' It was a pretty tough day," she said. "At that point, I needed a stem-cell transplant."

Like most patients, no one in Bjorkman's family was enough of a match. A computer search by Bjorkman's doctor found Castle. A husband, father of two and firefighter living almost 3,000 miles away, he presented the best chance to save her life.

While a probationary firefighter, Castle donated a couple of vials of blood in 1996 to the National Marrow Donor Program. His blood was then analyzed and the data stored. His cell phone rang around Thanksgiving 2004.

"They called me and said you're the best match. They said, would you be willing to be a donor," Castle, 39, recalled. "I said, 'Yeah, absolutely.'"

Castle's donation was one of many from New York's Bravest. FDNY firefighters are the largest single group of bone-marrow donors within the New York Blood Center's Special Donor Services program. The New York center is part of the national program's network.

"(Firefighters are) young, they're healthy, they're dedicated," said Marcelle Amiot-Priso, an operations manager at the blood center who worked with Castle.

To date, more than 8,000 firefighters are in program and 121 have been donors. The costs of screening and typing each firefighter who becomes a donor is covered by The Elaine Diedrich Memorial Donor Program. Retired Firefighter Mark Kwalwasser from Engine 43 in the Bronx started the memorial program in 1991 in honor of his sister, who suffered from leukemia.

The stem cells involved aren't embryonic stem cells but peripheral blood stem cells or, rather, blood-forming cells. As a donor, Castle could be asked to give either bone marrow or blood cells.

By early December 2004, he was at the Mount Sinai Medical Center. Four days of receiving a drug to increase his blood-forming cells was followed by harvest time. His blood was drawn from one arm, passed through a machine that filtered out the needed cells and returned via his other arm. The process took two days, four-and-a-half hours each.

His cells dripped into Bjorkman at University Hospital in Seattle on Dec. 22, 2004. Anonymity ruled.

"All I knew about him was he was a man, 35 years old," she said.

"All they told me was it was a 48-year-old woman," he said.

Bjorkman was in the hospital until May of the next year. While Castle was a good match, he wasn't perfect. Graft-versus-host disease set in, bringing Bjorkman stomach and lung problems.

Castle was allowed to request information about his recipient a year after the donation.

"I always wanted to know. Did it work? Did it not work?" he said.

He was ready but Bjorkman wasn't. She struggled with the disease, chemotherapy complications and other problems. Forms with Castle's information sat near her kitchen phone.

"I always knew where the paperwork was. I would just, once in a while, look at it," said Bjorkman, a graphic designer before her illness.

Finally, early one morning this winter, she began dialing - catching Castle on his way to the shower and work. Tears, more phone calls and e-mails flowed.

They met in person for the first time last week at a donor-program benefit dinner in Queens - onstage in front of hundreds.

Now, Bjorkman is back in Washington. She plans to look for a job, volunteer at an American Cancer Society thrift store and enjoy time with her husband, two sons, a daughter and a granddaughter.

Castle shrugs off the relief and restoration he brought to a formerly unknown family.

"As far as I'm concerned, it was nothing. She's the one that did all the work," Castle said. "The hardest part of the whole thing was finding a parking space in Manhattan for six days."