Jenny Nixon celebrating her seventh “re-birthday”. Photos: Supplied.
Wagga baker Jenny Nixon is celebrating the start of the seventh year of her “new” life thanks to a German man she’s never met.
“It’s my seventh ‘re-birthday’ of my first bone marrow transplant so it’s a huge day for me, it’s very emotional because I’ve been given life,” Ms Nixon said.
In 2018, Ms Nixon underwent a lifesaving bone marrow transplant after being diagnosed with myelodysplasia, a blood cancer that affects the bone marrow.
“I’d never heard of the word,” Ms Nixon recalled. “But it’s like anything: unless you suffer from it, you really don’t know.”
The survival rate in Australia for myelodysplasia is less than 50 per cent, and yet we have one of the world’s worst donation rates.
Ms Nixon receiving her lifesaving bone marrow transplant.
Ms Nixon is best known in Wagga for making colourful and fancy desserts through her business, Jenny’s Cakes Cookies and Creations. But this was temporarily halted by her health scare.
When her body stopped making red blood cells, the situation turned desperate. Blood donations kept her alive while doctors scrambled to find a bone marrow donor. Ms Nixon underwent 160 blood transfusions as time ran out.
“So the more blood transfusions you have, the more complicated it is to match you because of the amount of antibodies that you have in your blood to try and stop any rejection going on,” she said.
With no bone marrow donors in Australia to help her, Ms Nixon’s specialists had to look overseas.
They found a match in Germany.
German bone marrow donor Lars, who Ms Nixon has never met.
“My donor’s name is Lars. He’s German and he’d now be 58 years old, and he’s an engineer, but more than anything, he’s my hero,” Ms Nixon said.
“Because of him, I am alive today.”
Unlike other transplants, a bone marrow transplant is remarkably simple for both the donor and the recipient.
“You just sit in a chair and the transplant took 30 minutes, so yeah, it’s a really easy process,” Ms Nixon said,
“It’s actually a downer because it’s as easy as giving blood so you’d think more people would step up.”
Ms Nixon’s thankyou biscuits for blood donors at Wagga’s Lifeblood centre in Berry Street.
Unfortunately, Ms Nixon suffered complications after her transplant, including a blood infection, bowel infection, severe pneumonia, and then kidney failure.
“I ended up in ICU intubated, and my kids were called to say goodbye, but somehow I pulled through,” she said.
The much-loved baker was dealt another blow four years later when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a blood cancer that affects the bone marrow. Once again, Ms Nixon needed a transplant, and again, a worldwide search found another donor to save her life. Coincidentally, her second donor was also a German man.
“All I know is that at the time of the donation, he was a 48-year-old German male I can’t have any contact with until June this year,” Ms Nixon said.
Ms Nixon’s social media post celebrating her seventh “re-birthday” over the weekend.
A bone marrow transplant sees healthy stem cells introduced into the patient’s blood via a transfusion. They travel to the bone marrow and begin producing new, healthy blood cells by replacing the unhealthy ones that were destroyed by disease or treatment such as chemotherapy.
This “rebooting” of Ms Nixon’s blood-forming system with healthy cells did something else: it changed her blood type.
“I was O-Positive before the transplant, but I’m now O-Negative, so I’ve changed groups. Not many people on the planet can say that,” Ms Nixon said.
Thankyou biscuits at Wagga Wagga’s Lifeblood centre.
Bone marrow recipients can apply to contact their donor two years after the transplant if the donor is willing.
Ms Nixon didn’t hesitate.
“I wrote a letter to my bone marrow coordinator and she passed the letter on to my donor, who had the right of reply,” Ms Nixon said.
”To my delight, I found out who he was and, yes, I have constant contact with him now.”
Her dream is to one day meet her donor to thank him in person.
Ms Nixon’s story inspires others to donate.
Today, Ms Nixon is a constant champion for blood donors and awareness. To mark her ”re-birthday” anniversary, every year she bakes biscuits with messages of thanks and encouragement, and delivers them to Wagga Wagga’s Lifeblood Donor Centre in Berry Street, where staff gladly pass them out to donors.
She also uses social media to encourage as many people as possible to become donors, with her philosophy to “always look on the bright side of life”. Her story inspires many to donate.
“We just have to suck up whatever happens and roll with the punches and get on with it,” Ms Nixon said.
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