Subban’s tweet of support helps ‘Swab for Ellie’
Ellie White had a great summer. Having been diagnosed with leukemia on Dec. 4, 2017, and undergone five rounds of chemotherapy since then, she came home for the first time in May.
“It took the first little while to build her up,” said the six-year-old girl’s mother, Amanda Sokoloff, of Hampstead. “She came home and she couldn’t walk up one stair.
“By the end of the summer she was at Champions Day Camp, which is a sports-influenced camp. She went to dance camp for eight hours a day. She started Grade 1. We went to Disney World. She was doing phenomenally well until (two weeks) ago.”
Ellie was scheduled for her monthly CBC — complete blood count — on Friday, Oct. 12, but the Sunday before, Sokoloff saw that something wasn’t right with her daughter.
“I noticed her gums were swollen,” she said, “and I remembered those same swollen-looking gums from December. I got really nervous.”
By Monday morning, Ellie’s skin was a pale grey and her eyes were withdrawn. On Wednesday, she wasn’t feeling well so Sokoloff went to get her at school.
“She said, ‘My legs hurt, mommy,’ which was a major indicator last time. With leukemia, you feel it in your joints and bones, in your lymph nodes and groin. I knew at that moment that it had come back.”
Ellie got an unexpected boost of support over the weekend when the P.K. Subban Foundation posted about her plight on Facebook, encouraging people to “Swab for Ellie,” by joining Héma- Québec’s stem-cell registry. On Monday, the former Montreal Canadiens defenceman lent the initiative a personal touch by tweeting his encouragement, along with links for people to join stem-cell registries in the rest of Canada and the U.S.
“Keep fighting Ellie!! You’re a champion,” Subban wrote. “We’re all thinking of you. Swab for Ellie.”
His call-out made a difference. Héma-Québec usually registers around 3,000 potential stem-cell donors per year. Since Saturday, the organization has added 1,200 new names to its list.
“I’m really shocked at how quickly word seems to be spreading. It’s gone viral,” Sokoloff said. “It’s incredible. Not just for Ellie — hopefully for Ellie — I don’t think people realize, there are going to be matches for so many more people in the future. This will have an enormous impact on people who are still healthy today, but won’t be one day.”
Sokoloff, her husband and their four-year-old daughter have already been tested and they are not perfect matches for Ellie. So now Sokoloff is hoping to find “the best mismatch . ... It could literally make the difference between her having a life and not.”
Before Ellie can undergo a stemcell transplant, she must get rid of the cancerous cells in her body. On Monday, she finished a five-day stint of what her mother describes as “extremely toxic, high-dose chemo” at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. Tuesday morning, Ellie had a lumbar puncture (or “LP,” also known as a spinal tap), as part of her chemo protocol. That she was even up for the procedure was good news.
“She was supposed to get this LP last week, but she wasn’t well enough,” Sokoloff said. “She’s having problems with oxygen, bleeding and fevers. But she made a good turnaround in the last 24 hours, so she was strong enough to receive the LP.”
All of which brought relief to a mother and a family, who have had little of it lately.
“Yesterday was a good day,” Sokoloff said. “Today, I was nervous about the LP. Sometimes there are complications with it. She really feels sick because of the anesthetic, she bruises or is uncomfortable. This was the fastest LP she has ever had.
“She woke up faster than before. She ate two grilled-cheese sandwiches and chips, which is more than she has eaten in seven days. Right now, I feel really good.”
Sokoloff points people concerned about Ellie’s progress to the Facebook groups Helping Hands for Ellie and Facebook.com/SwabForEllie.
Héma-Québec spokesperson Laurent-Paul Ménard said when a star of Subban’s stature gets involved, it helps not just Ellie but anyone in need of a stem-cell transplant.
“People tend to believe this will make a difference for the person who we’re looking for a compatible donor for,” Ménard said. “That’s not necessarily the case. In this case, we haven’t received the demand yet from the Montreal Children’s Hospital, so I don’t have that information. Sometimes it happens, but in many cases we might find a compatible donor already registered here in Quebec, or anywhere in the world.
“Nowadays, we have approximately 31 million people who are registered and are available to become donors. We may have a compatible donor for Ellie in that case. That said, it’s always a good thing to raise awareness about the registry and to recruit more donors.”