Missouri brother gives sister bone marrow

SEDALIA —  As the start of a new year draws near, Dawn Pflughaupt can't help but reflect on the generous act that literally saved her life.

The 37-year-old former Sedalia resident was the recipient of a bone marrow transplant. Her brother, Brock Pflughaupt, was the donor.

Dawn Pflughaupt was working for Chrysler and raising her teenage daughter, Sierra, when she begin feeling ill. She said she thought it was just a bad case of the flu. "I had bruises and was tired,but I thought that was from working in the automotive industry."

After a visit to the hospital and treatment for what doctors called a viral infection, Pflughaupt went home to rest. But an early morning phone call from a specialist had Pflughaupt racing back to the hospital. "They told me I might bleed out if I didn't come to the hospital," she said.

Pflughaupt was shocked to hear what the blood tests had revealed. She had leukemia and the prognosis was dire.

"The doctors told me to call my family and my pastor because it was time to say good-bye," she said.

While calling her family to rally around her should have been one of the easiest things to do, it wasn't. Pflughaupt hadn't spoken to her family in 12 years.

Pflughaupt, who was once a stand-out basketball player for Smith-Cotton High School in the late 1980s, did a stint in prison for selling marijuana. Her life choices are what drove a wedge between her and her once close-knit family.

"I was a good kid gone bad," she said. "I was on the wrong path and I thought I was big, bad, tough and strong." During that time, her brother Brock always kept in touch.

"He was always checking up on me," she said. "And he always let me know when there was a graduation or wedding."

Pflughaupt's partner eventually made the phone call to her family, and her mother, sister and brother rushed to her side. Her father had died in 2005. "That was hard," she said. "Knowing I was sick and I never talked to him before he died."

Although Pflughaupt's family was with her, she still had a long, arduous road ahead.. After meeting withSteven Pincus, a St. Louis doctor who gave her a 20 percent chance of survival, she began months of chemotherapy and radiation. The only time she left the hospital was to attend her daughter's eighth grade graduation ceremony. And Pflughaupt's sisterTara Wolfe stayed in St. Louis during the entire process.

"We rekindled our relationship," Pflughaupt said. "Tara dropped everything to be with me."

As the drugs needed to kill the cancer ravaged her body, Pflughaupt's doctor began looking for a bone marrow donor to prolong her life. Wolfe immediately stepped up to be tested, but was not a match. Wolfe, who was pregnant at the time, then offered to donate her unborn baby's stem cells, which could be harvested from the umbilical cord when the baby was born. That option was soon ruled out as well.

"It was rough and hard," Pflughaupt said. "I had no immune system and I was crying blood and delusional."

After the letdown of two negative matches, the sisters began joking that Brock was probably a perfect match to his sister because they looked so similar. "Brock and I are like twins," Pflughaupt said.

After undergoing a nine-point compatibility test, Pflughaupt's brother Brock was found to be a 99.98 percent match. He immediately began a weeklong series of injections to turn his platelets into white blood cells in preparation for the surgery.

"He (Brock) was so stiff and sore," Pflughaupt said. "He was walking around like the Michelin Man."

Pflughaupt said Brock underwent the procedure with no complaints. "He's my hero," she said.

Jacquie Pflughaupt echoes her daughter's sentiments.

"I'm not one bit surprised by my son's actions," she said. "It's in his DNA." Jacquie said she is proud of her son's accomplishments and amazed at the man he has become. "His father would be so proud," she said.

While family members believe Brock's decision to donate bone marrow was heroic and selfless, he is humble.

"That's just what family does," he said.

Today Dawn Pflughaupt is cancer free. "There are no words to describe how I feel," she said. "All I can do to thank Brock is appreciate life and live it to the fullest."

The family has also re-established their loving bond. They talk daily and gather at Brock's house as often as possible to have large family meals.

"Families have ins and outs," Jacquie said. "Sometimes God taps you on the shoulder and sometimes he takes a baseball bat to the side of your head. We got the baseball bat."

Brock has also placed his name on the National Bone Marrow Registry.

"It hurt, but it won't deter me from donating again," he said of the procedure.