A Random Blood Donation in New York Saves Moffitt Patient’s Life
On Valentine’s Day, 1999, doctors diagnosed Maurice Poindexter with chronic lymphatic leukemia (CLL), a blood cancer that causes the bone marrow to produce too many white blood cells. He was 32. It wasn’t until 23 years later that he was finally able to beat it, thanks to a donor in New York whom he had never met.
“The idea of a transplant had been discussed for years,” Poindexter remembered. “But they could never find a match. They screened my siblings, my kids, but none were an appropriate match. I lost it when I learned there was a donor. I cried! How could a person think of such an act of kindness to donate to someone they will never know or meet but possibly help? That’s the first time I became overwhelmed with this whole process. I rejoiced.”
But it took more than two decades of treatment for Poindexter to reach this point – and to eventually meet his donor this summer at a bone marrow transplant reunion event in downtown Tampa.
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“I had never heard of it,” Poindexter said of his blood cancer when he was first diagnosed in 1999. “So, I researched it and my wife and I decided it was best to keep the news from the kids. So, we didn’t tell our immediate family.”
Since that day in 1999, Poindexter has gone through several different chemotherapy regimens, each resulting in temporary remission. With each victory, came the news just a few years later that the cancer found its way back.
In 2017 his doctors in Utah suggested he visit Moffitt Cancer Center. By the end of that year, he and his wife had moved to Tampa Bay so he could continue treatment.
“Maurice has a type of leukemia that is a slow-growing disease, so patients with this may not even need to be treated right away,” said Moffitt hematologist Michael Jain, MD, PhD. “The problem with CLL is that it is crowding out other cells in the bone marrow which can cause low platelet counts and increase the risk of infections or other issues.”
While patients diagnosed with CLL can live long lives, Jain said that those diagnosed young can see the disease become more aggressive over time. That’s exactly what led to Poindexter’s relocation to Tampa and his treatment at Moffitt.
“When it came back the third time, I started becoming challenged emotionally and psychologically,” Poindexter said. “I was confronting my mortality and having serious conversations with mental health professionals. They were all very helpful and they convinced me to put aside the façade I’d placed for the kids and the family. I realized how challenging it can be when you feel alone.”
Maurice Poindexter hugs his donor, Chinyere Chambers, at a recent BMT Reunion Event in Tampa.
Throughout his journey, Poindexter would hear about the option of a bone marrow transplant, a procedure with the possibility of curing him. However, after testing friends and family members, doctors could not find an appropriate donor.
For Black patients like Poindexter, the chance of finding a donor is significantly lower than other ethnic groups. According to the National Marrow Donor Program, African Americans have around a 29% chance of finding a match, compared to an almost 80% chance for white patients. This is due to underrepresentation of African American donors on registries.
By the time Poindexter walked through the doors of Moffitt, research had produced more options for treatment, including CAR T-cell therapy, an immunological treatment that uses the body’s own immune system to destroy cancerous cells. While the procedure has a strong success rate, it did not result in remission for Poindexter.
“But technology had really advanced in the field of allogeneic transplants, or transplants of immune cells from an individual who has never had cancer into a patient with cancer in the hopes the other person’s immune system recognizes the cancer and kills it,” Jain said. “In the past you had to have a full and perfect match.”
Now, however, it’s possible to undergo a successful transplant with a half-matched donor, thanks to post-transplant cyclophosphamide, a chemotherapy administered a few days after a transplant that can overcome conflicts that can arise between the two immune systems.
For Poindexter, it was a case of medical technology and research keeping pace with his advancing CLL.
“Every time Maurice’s cancer needed it, the scientific advances kept pace with him,” Jain said. “The new post-transplant chemo is what has kept him so healthy today.”
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It’s been two years since Poindexter’s transplant. There is no sign of disease, and he is enjoying semi-retirement in Florida and focusing on his golf game. In October 2024 he finally got a chance to thank the woman who saved his life. His donor, Chinyere Chambers, attended an event in Tampa, connecting donors to recipients.
“I was very anxious about our meeting,” Poindexter said. “I owed this person everything and when I met her, I realized I was hugging her too hard! She’s a sweetheart of a person and she saved my life.”
It’s a moment many recipients of transplants don’t get to experience. Donors usually remain anonymous and very few get to actually thank the person who saved their life.
That’s what makes these reunion events so remarkable, according to Jain.
“The resources needed to make this connection is an incredible thing from a human perspective,” Jain said. “And it was an incredible moment when he met his donor. It’s also amazing that if Maurice had been born 20 years earlier, we may not have been able to control his disease. But technology kept pace with him.”
Poindexter and his wife, Michelle, plan to stay in close contact with Chambers and her family. Holidays, birthdays and other celebrations will have a few more chairs at the table, he said.
“We’re family now,” he said.
