He has nothing to do with Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, but a young German says he has been considered LeBlanc’s genetic twin since he was given his stem cells.
Everything separates them: age, distance, personality. Still, Jonathan Kehl and LeBlanc now say they feel connected for a lifetime.
It is a link shown in LeBlanc’s first message to the donor.
“You have saved my life and I will be forever grateful to you for your generosity.” In English, this means, “You saved my life and I will always be grateful for your generosity.”
Jonathan Kehl said he grew up in a family of educators who see service as an important value. (Stephane Richer / Radio-Canada)
LeBlanc suffered from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer that made him fear the worst.
He had to wait two years after the transplant to find out the identity of the donor.
One detail immediately jumped to LeBlanc: the donor’s youth.
“He arrived in a hospital email. There was his name and address. What struck me was his date of birth. He was born in 2000. When he gave his stem cells, he was barely twenty, “LeBlanc said. in an interview.
Jonathan Kehl lives with his parents in Bad Hersfeld, a small town in central Germany.
Kehl’s whole family was very interested in his stem cell donation. They wanted to know who the mysterious recipient was.
Above all, they wanted to know if the recipient was still alive.
When the good news came, Kehl said, his mother immediately searched the Internet for LeBlanc’s name.
“Then he came up to me and said, ‘This person has a Wikipedia [page], he is a minister of Canada, “he said.” That was the part that really shocked me the most. It was amazing, that moment. “
Barely fifteen days after being discharged from hospital after a stem cell transplant, Dominic LeBlanc was sworn in as chairman of the Queen’s Private Council. (Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press)
Part of Jonathan’s story began with an almost banal gesture: registering at the donor bank.
There was a campaign at his school in 2018. Students aged 16 to 18 gathered to give samples.
“I registered, like [did] almost every other student, ”he said.
Dr. Sylvie Lachance of the Transplant Program at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital in Montreal chose Jonathan’s profile from the German stem cell donor bank. It was perfectly compatible with that of his patient, LeBlanc.
“When you’re Canadian, you often appeal to Canadian and American donors, or often European donors,” he said. “Among European donors, the German bank of unrelated donors is formidable for the depth of its typing.”
Despite her many years of medical practice, Dr. Sylvie Lachance said she is always amazed at how willing people are to donate stem cells to strangers. (Stephane Richer / Radio-Canada)
In LeBlanc’s case, the challenge was not to identify a donor. It was a matter of managing his disease very aggressively so that he could undergo a transplant.
LeBlanc remembers looking in the mirror in the bathroom of a hospital in Moncton, NB, in the spring of 2019 and being alarmed by what he saw.
“His eyes were completely yellow,” he said. The lymphoma had affected his liver.
LeBlanc said Moncton doctors had never faced a case like his before.
“The type of blood cancer I had was so rare that there weren’t many clinical trials on what type of chemotherapy to give,” he said. “Doctors in Moncton, with the help of Montreal doctors, literally tried to find a prescription.”
Dr. Lachance said she believes LeBlanc had a narrow getaway.
“It could be said that his life was in danger. We had a window of opportunity during which the disease responded,” he said.
Back in Germany, Kehl was preparing for hyssop at the time. For several days he had to inject a drug that stimulates the production of stem cells in the blood, although he is afraid of needles.
Her mother was worried, Kehl said. But even without knowing at the time who would receive his stem cells, he said, he already felt partly responsible for the well-being of the recipient, his future “genetic twin.”
Jonathan’s father, Andreas, on the left, and Andrea’s mother, on the right. Jonathan’s stem cell donation has fueled the Kehl family’s table conversation for more than two years since the operation. (Stephane Richer / Radio-Canada)
“Obviously we will be bound forever,” LeBlanc said. “He made an extraordinary gesture that gave me a second life.”
With advances in transplantation techniques, it is easier than ever to identify a donor. But Dr. Lachance said she is still fascinated by what a donor will do to a complete stranger halfway around the world.
“I always say it comforts us,” he said. “It reconciles us to human nature.”