804 days of treatment, 793 chemotherapies, and hopes shattered in a health check-up.
On January 4, Katinka Rambert-Cadré and her husband learned the worst: their son, Joseph, 3 and a half years old, suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia (a blood cancer), had a relapse.
“It was the last day of his treatment, we were four hours away from his last dose”, testifies Katinka on Tuesday.
"We didn't understand right away.
We went back to the hospital, and that's where the doctors explained to us that, given the seriousness of his illness, his best chance was a bone marrow transplant.
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Two weeks later, Joseph's face can be found in the media and on social networks.
And for good reason.
Spontaneously, Katinka's relatives appealed for bone marrow donations for the little boy.
The urgency is there: because of compatibility problems, "his chances of finding a donor are one in a million", testifies Katinka.
This donation depends on Joseph's HLA typing, a particularly complex set of antigens.
“What influences the HLA typing is the genetic history of the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents… If you have classic European-type genetics, we say approximately that there is a chance in a million of compatibility because there are thousands and thousands of combinations.
And it is rare to find someone who, by the chance of genetics, has had the same distribution of genes", explains Doctor Catherine Faucher, deputy director and head of the hematopoietic stem cell collection and transplant center at the 'Biomedicine Agency.
Few male volunteers
Since 2004, the Biomedicine Agency has been in charge of the register of bone marrow donors.
To be eligible, you must be between the ages of 18 and 35, be in good health, and agree to perform a saliva test which will determine your HLA typing.
Registration is done on a dedicated site, dondemoelleosseuse.fr.
After that - this process can take a few weeks, the time to carry out the laboratory tests -, the volunteer is registered in a register of potential donors, who can be solicited for a donation in France, but also in the rest of the world.
“On average, a patient takes eight years before being contacted,” slips Dr. Faucher, who adds that deciding to register must be a “thoughtful” approach.
After the call from relatives of Joseph's family, as after many other similar calls in the past, requests to the Biomedicine Agency have multiplied, testifies Dr. Faucher.
“We have thousands of young women who have requested our register, and who are waiting, but only a few hundred men who have responded.
The doctor insists: “Young men, come on!
We have a lot of registrations of young women, but we also need young men to rebalance that.
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Joseph confined to hospital
While waiting for a possible transplant in the coming months, Joseph, for his part, lives "in a sterile room at the hospital", totally confined.
"There is a protective airlock, to enter, we put on a charlotte, a blouse, an FFP2 mask", describes Katinka.
"We can't kiss her anymore, it's very difficult as a mother.
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Joseph "sings, dances, plays" like "all the other little boys", describes his mother.
LP/DR
The little boy multiplies the transfusions. “For a week, he received two transfusions a day. He needs donated blood and platelets because he has 90% cancer cells in his blood. His marrow no longer has room to produce platelets and red blood cells. What pushes Katinka to launch, in parallel with its appeal for bone marrow donations, an appeal for blood donations, whose stocks are particularly low.
Despite these ordeals, Joseph retains his humor and his enthusiasm as a little boy, “like all little French boys.
".
“He is full of life, he plays, he sings, he dances.
I find it extraordinary,” marvels Katinka.
Every year, around 2,000 patients receive a bone marrow transplant due to serious illness in France, according to the Agence de biomédecine.
Among them, about 300 are children.
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