STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Devon Peterson was having the time of her life, driving a team of Clydesdales through the Sawtooth Mountains with a wagon full of campers at Camp Little Laugh when the migraines began.

The 13-year-old Bellevue girl thought that she’d been given a new lease on life after spending  months at St. Luke’s Children Hospital in Boise being treated for acute myeloid leukemia diagnosed in January 2016. But now, after being declared in remission, a CT scan showed a mass on her brain.

The cancer was back, along with crippling pain she felt even while zonked on medicine.

“The cancer cells seemed to have lain in wait in her spine and are in her nervous system,” said her mother Jennifer “Jen” Peterson. “The first round was more chemo-related illness, accompanied by weight loss and weakness. This is more straight-up pain.”

The recurrence forced the Wood River Middle School student to retreat to Boise for a high dosage of chemo to keep her alive. But doctors believe that her best chance for recovery lies in a bone marrow transplant to treat her acute myeloid leukemia, which is basically bone marrow failure in which stem cells get out of whack and fail to produce the healthy red blood cells one needs to live.

Jen and her husband Tyler Peterson had hoped Devon’s twin sister Gracie would be a match since she had some of the same genetic makeup. But there’s only a one-in-four chance that family members are matches, and it didn’t pan out.

“No one who knows them would be surprised to know that they are mirror opposites. Gracie is more Dad. Devo, more Mom,” said Jen Peterson. “But, right when we felt like the quicksand was cutting off our breath, the ropes and nets appeared and we were back on solid ground.”

Peterson was talking about the kindness of friends and even strangers in the Wood River and Magic Valley who took part in swab parties for Devo, who turned 14 this fall.

Sarah Hedrick volunteered her Hailey bookstore, Iconoclast Books, for a two-day swab party. She had been cheered by the way the community supported her and her family following her husband’s death in an automobile accident several years ago, she said.

“What is a Swab Party? It’s a way to save a life,” she said.

DiVine Wine Bar next door volunteered to give swabbers 15 percent off a beverage. And 258 people answered the call to take a moment to do a cheek swab that would put them on the international registry.

“That’s a lot of people for the size of the community,” said Koren Karlovic, donor recruitment  coordinator for DKMS in the Pacific Northwest.

The effort continued with local firefighters swabbing cheeks and Camp Rainbow Gold holding two events in Boise in the girl’s honor. There was even a swab party in Twin Falls at a car sale at the Magic Valley Mall.

The swabbing is easy, said Karlovic. Anyone in good health between the ages of 18 and 55 can do it, as all it involves is swabbing the inside of the cheek with what looks like a giant Q-tip for 30 seconds. The person’s Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA) tissue markers will be reported to the data base, where it will remain until the person turns 61.

But finding a match is not so easy.

DKMS, a nonprofit international organization, was founded in 1991 in Germany to create a registry of people who might offer matches for those fighting leukemia. But, while there are 7.6 million people in the DKMS registry, there are 14,000 people worldwide looking for a match.

That’s because there’s only a 4 percent chance of finding a match with a perfect stranger.

“It’s a needle in the haystack. Our goal is to get as many needles in the haystack—young, healthy willing donors—as we can. The fact that it’s so hard to get a match just goes to show how unique and wondrous our DNA really is,” said Karlovic.

The biggest challenge is educating people about how easy it is to save someone’s life in light of all the misconceptions and horror stories about what donors go through, said Karlovic.

Being a donor is easy and painless, she added.

Someone found to be a match undergoes a physical exam and blood test paid for by DKMS. About 77 percent of those can make a stem cell donation.

“It’s similar to a blood donation in that you sit with a needle in your arm for a few hours, all the while providing life saving medicine,” said Karlovic.

The rest must provide direct bone marrow donations. But those, too, are outpatient procedures in which doctors simply extract marrow from the hip bone with a needle.

“It’s not a spinal tap, regardless of what people have seen in horror movies,” said Karlovic. “You sleep through it.”

Rae Smith of Burley can attest to that.

She underwent testing in 1982 at the University of Washington hospital in Seattle when her 44-year-old identical twin was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer.

“We were the mirror image of each other. We sounded a like and everything else except that my sister Gay seemed to get more bad genes than I,” she said. “Then, they stuck a big needle in me to pull out marrow and platelets. It’s so much easier today. I wish I could get tested on behalf of Devon but, at 80, I’m too old.”

Devon Peterson wants those who participate in swab tests know that they are brave and heroic and that she will not waste a minute of a life-saving transplant, said Jen Peterson.

“Apparently, young males are the best match, so if any young males are out there reading….” she quipped.

For information, go to https://www.dkms.org/