When Allie Reimold boarded Flight 2223 in Houston a week ago, she didn’t expect to see him.
It had been four years since they’d last visited in person. And eight years, almost exactly, since the budding scientist – on the darkest day of the year – had given the commercial airline pilot a gift that would link the two for life.
Back then, United Airlines Capt. David Whitson had been facing a devastating diagnosis: acute myeloid leukemia. Healthy blood could bring the husband and father back from the brink. But even his brother’s didn’t match closely enough.
That’s when Allie, who years earlier had opted into a bone marrow registry, got the call:
Would she help save a dying stranger?
Since then, Allie and David had met in person. They’d linked up on social media. And in gratitude for her priceless gift, David had added Allie to his United Airlines travel benefits so she “travels like my children or my family do,” the pilot told CNN.
That’s how David, who’d just piloted a flight from Dallas to Houston, got the ping: Allie was also in Houston, about to board outbound Flight 2223.
But it was due to take off in 40 minutes. And David was on the other side of the airport.
He reached out to the jet’s captain.
And dashed to the gate.
David Whitson, a United Airlines pilot, received a rare diagnosis in August 2016 and had only one hope for survival. – Courtesy David Whitson
A rare diagnosis and a desperate search
David was just 44 when he went from incredibly healthy to being on a ventilator.
When his cold symptoms turned into a fever, David rushed to an emergency room in August 2016. He explained to the doctor that “something was seriously wrong” because the left side of his body was in pain and a lymph node was swelling up in his neck.
A CT scan and other tests revealed a grim diagnosis a few days later.
Acute myeloid leukemia – a rare, fast-growing blood and bone marrow cancer originating from abnormal blood stem cells – tends to affect older adults, according to Yale Medicine. Only about 29.5% of patients are expected to live for at least five years after diagnosis.
A doctor after one chemotherapy treatment told David he had a 5% chance of survival because his type of this cancer had a genetic mutation “that was really, really bad,” David recounted.
“I couldn’t even walk five steps. I couldn’t move. I could barely just move my legs,” David said. “I couldn’t sit up, I couldn’t even get out of bed.”
Being a usually active person, David decided to set small goals for himself, like exercising during commercials or walking to the bathroom. He tried to stay positive, relying on faith and prayers for strength.
His hopes dwindled when two more rounds of chemotherapy failed to fight the illness.
But if he found the right match, David’s cancerous, Type B-positive blood could be replaced. It could return him to health. And give him more years with his wife and kids.
Advancements in acute myeloid leukemia treatment have significantly improved remission rates, according to the National Cancer Institute. Nowadays, most transplants use stem cells from donor blood – rather than bone marrow – in a much less complicated process, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
But finding a donor match can be challenging: Only about 30% of patients have a relative who can donate; for the rest, doctors search national and international donor registries, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Donors and patients are matched based on inherited genes called human leukocyte antigens, which carry the code for markers that the body uses to know which cells belong. Donors and recipients can have incompatible blood types, and it isn’t a factor in the match.
Siblings are often the best matches because they have the same biological parents.
But David’s brother wasn’t an ideal match.
So, his doctors tried the registries.
A stranger answers the call
Allie got the call.
Four years earlier, as an 18-year-old behavioral sciences undergrad, she had helped organize the Purdue University Dance Marathon to raise money for an Indiana children’s hospital. During the 16-hour event, she’d swabbed her cheek to join the National Marrow Donor Program, a global nonprofit facilitating bone marrow and stem cell transplants for patients with life-threatening blood cancers.
Some 18,000 Americans are diagnosed each year with a life-threatening illness – including leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cell disease and more than 70 others – that could be treated with a marrow or blood cell transplant, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. But some patients, the federal agency says, will never find a match.
When Allie learned her blood matched someone in need, she was excited. “I really wanted to be able to help someone in this type of way,” she told CNN, “and I think that’s also because of my interest in public health and my interest in medicine.”
Still, she didn’t have a lot of details about the person she was donating to. In the US, stem cell recipients typically have to wait at least a year before they can meet their donors, according to the National Marrow Donor Program.
Allie soon went to the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center in Houston, where for eight hours she donated peripheral blood stem cells through apheresis, a nonsurgical procedure that removes components from a donor’s blood and then returns what remains to their body, according to the National Cancer Institute.
“You’re a little sore, you’re a little tired, but you get to go home that night, and it’s really, really rewarding,” she recalled.
On December 21, 2016 – when the winter solstice blanketed Texas with more than 14 hours of darkness – doctors at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas injected Allie’s bone marrow stem cells into David’s arm, he said.
“Stem cells are like seeds, and they went into my bone and planted, and they grew her blood,” he told CNN.
The treatment was successful, David said, changing his Type B-positive blood to Type O-negative.
Still, David didn’t know who’d given him this life-saving gift.
In 2018, David Whitson was able to return to work as a pilot. – Courtesy David Whitson
‘It’s the least that I could do’
Over the next 18 months, David got better and better, until he was strong enough to return to work as a United Airlines pilot. Allie, meanwhile, kept up her studies, focusing more and more on how to help people make healthy choices to prevent chronic diseases like cancer.
The two eventually were introduced to each other by the donor program in March 2018. And in August 2018, David and Allie finally met in person for the first time at an event hosted by Baylor Medical Center. After an onstage Q&A session for patients and staff, Allie and her parents and David and his family went out to lunch.
David still gets emotional about it. “It’s still overwhelming to me that a stranger would take the time to save my life,” he said. “It just gave me hope.”
“My blood is identical to Allie’s now,” David said.
The pair would catch up every year on the anniversary of David’s transplant, said Allie, who donated peripheral blood stem cells again in 2018 to a different recipient and has encouraged others to consider joining the bone marrow registry.
Beyond that, as a small token of his thanks, David shared his travel benefits with Allie. “It’s the least that I could do,” he explained. “She saved my life.”
Owing to account notifications, David from time to time surprises Allie at an airport where they both happen to be, he said. She’s now 30, with a Ph.D. and a job as a cancer prevention public health researcher at the University of California, Davis, emphasizing the importance of preventive health care, including regular doctor visits, stress management and a healthy lifestyle, she said.
“We both like to keep things light, we both like to joke around,” he said, “and we both like to be silly with each other.”
For her part, Allie often thinks of David when she flies – and then usually texts or calls him, she said.
“Every time I see him, he’s got a smile on his face,” she said. “He’s in such a great mood.”
As Allie waited last week for her flight to depart from Houston, it had been four years since she’d seen David in person.
He knew she was there, of course – and was racing toward her gate.
But Allie wasn’t in a joking mood.
‘The true hero of this story’
Allie’s mom recently had a heart attack, she said. Like David before his cancer diagnosis, “she had felt healthy, she didn’t see it coming on.” And given Allie’s profession, the illness hit close to home.
Boarding began, and Allie found her seat on the plane. As she waited for the aircraft’s doors to close, she heard its PA system begin to crackle.
She didn’t think much of it.
Then, she heard his name.
At first, it surprised her.
Then, she thought: “Of course, he’s doing this.’”
David Whitson and Allie Reimold reunited eight years after the transplant. – Courtesy David Whitson
David had made it in time. And in an announcement to everyone aboard, he shared his transplant story. Then, he walked over to the passenger who’d made it all happen.
It’s “not every day you can get to hug someone that can save your life,” he said. “Allie is the true hero of this story. I am just glad to be alive.”
Other passengers erupted in applause.
It would be another week before the winter solstice marking the eighth anniversary of David’s transplant. But their impromptu reunion became a “really fun” highlight to Allie’s long travel day, especially given her mom’s health crisis. While Allie’s mom is doing better now, the pair are reminded to never take good health for granted.
“Every year around this time I am just so grateful,” David told CNN.
“I can’t believe that much time has gone by,” Allie added. “I would still to this day absolutely do it again.”
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