Marrow donation saves sister's life
Recovering Noble girl gets treated for aplastic anemia

BY TAMI ALTHOFF

Published: November 22, 2008

NOBLE — Makenzie Driever, 8, is a "rough-and-tumble girl.” When bruises started showing up on Makenzie’s body last May, her parents didn’t think much about it at first.

"When it gets warm outside, you expect kids to have more bruises,” Makenzie’s mom, Lisa Driever, said. "May 10, we noticed she had a really bad bruise on her arm. She said it didn’t hurt, but it was a pretty deep-looking bruise.”

By the end of the week, Makenzie had several bruises. So her mom took her to the doctor. She was immediately sent to Children’s Hospital at OU Medical Center where she was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia.

Devastating diagnosis

"It wasn’t good, but the type of leukemia they said she had looked curable,” Lisa Driever said.

Tests later confirmed Makenzie didn’t have leukemia. She had severe aplastic anemia. Her bone marrow was producing less than 5 percent of the normal amount of blood cells, and her survival depended on a bone marrow transplant.

Makenzie’s parents and siblings — brothers, Colton, 10, and Kellen, 4, and sister, Kirstin, 6 — were tested to see if one was a suitable bone marrow donor.

"When they told us no one was a match, we were very devastated,” Lisa Driever said.

Without a match from a sibling, there was a good chance they wouldn’t find a donor for Makenzie.

"It was heart-wrenching,” Makenzie’s dad, Thad Driever, said. "As a parent, you would do anything for your child. It was heartbreaking.”

Answered prayers

Then, doctors decided to take a second look at Kirstin’s sample. It was a perfect match. The Drievers call it a miracle.

In July, Thad Driever shut down his inflatable toy rental business, Lisa Driever took leave from her job as a pharmacist and the entire family headed to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to begin the transplant process.

The morning of July 14, Kirstin was taken a mile away to Rochester Methodist Hospital where nearly a pint of bone marrow was taken from her 45-pound body. As soon as Kirstin was awake, the family rushed back to Makenzie’s side to watch her get the transplant.

"The bag of bone marrow actually beat us to the hospital,” Lisa Driever said. "It was pretty cool that her sister donated and got to be with her when she got the transplant.”

Road to recovery

Doctors didn’t expect Makenzie to return home until this month, but she did better than expected. She came home Sept. 6, and returned to her third-grade class at Noble’s Hubbard Elementary School on Oct. 23.

Makenzie still must take medication and make monthly visits to Children’s Hospital. In January, she’ll go back to the Mayo Clinic for a six-month checkup.

"She’s doing great. She loves being with her friends, and we’ve been blessed that she hasn’t caught any infections since she’s been home,” Lisa Driever said. "God deserves all the credit. Only by the grace of God has she done so well.”

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