Can Teen Save Long Lost Sister from Rare Medical Condition?
(CBS) "It's like excruciating pain and like, you can't describe it. And it's very hard to deal with because sometimes I just don't want to live anymore because I can't take it and it's very hard."
That's Louisiana teenager Madison Tully talking.
Born with sickle cell anemia and recently diagnosed with lupus, the brave 16-year-old is only one of 12 people in the world with both diseases and is in constant pain, she told local television station WWLTV.
Lupus is an autoimmune disease which causes her immune system to attack her organs. Sickle cell anemia prevents oxygen from properly reaching her organs and creates terrible suffering.
Doctors say there is only one way to help her - a bone marrow transplant which could cure both conditions.
But there's a catch. Madison was adopted at birth and her biological parents were of mixed race - making it doubly difficult to find a suitable donor.
Now, one brave 17-year-old has stepped forward to save her long lost sister.
Jasmin Thomas is Madison's biological sister. According to the station, the two were reconnected several years ago for the first time and amazingly Jasmin is a match.
"Madison is a bit of a miracle. She is a mixed heritage patient (White, Black and Hispanic) and that can be very difficult to identify a perfectly matched sibling," Dr. Julie Kanter told WWLTV. "And her sibling is a 10 out of 10 perfectly matched sibling."
Kanter, a pediatric hematologist and oncologist at Tulane Hospital for Children, says she hopes a bone marrow transplant will "produce new red blood cells that contain normal hemoglobin, not the sickle hemoglobin, which should replace the ones she has and completely get rid of her sickle cell disease. In addition, because this new immune system (the donor's) does not have that abnormal auto immune response, it should cure her lupus as well."
According to the station, a bone marrow transplant has not been tried before to cure both conditions at once.
"It means everything. It really does because she's young and everything, and then she's like, she really wanted to do this for me," Madison told WWLTV. "She could be saving my life."
According to Madison's Facebook page, her transplant was successfully performed Wednesday. Now, she must wait to see what her new stem cells can do.