8-year-old leukemia survivor meets her stem cell donor from Austria
With her parents beside her Thursday, 8-year-old leukemia survivor Sabrina Chahir gleefully met the third person to whom she owes her life.
Maximilian Eule, a 30-year-old German citizen, traveled from his current home in Austria to a celebration of Sabrina's life at Pilot Pete's restaurant in Schaumburg, where he saw the Mount Prospect girl whom he saved through a 2011 stem cell donation.
While a pair of teen violinists played, Sabrina sat in a burgundy dress and tiara with an expression of eager anticipation on her face as she was informed Eule had arrived.
And when he entered the restaurant's party room, the two instantly embraced, Eule lifting Sabrina into the air.
“Well, I was looking for a big surprise, and that's what I got — a big surprise,” Sabrina said afterward. “It was very exciting.”
Sabrina was only 2 years old when she diagnosed with leukemia in May 2009. By that time, more than 80 percent of her blood cells were cancerous.
Though she went into remission after many debilitating chemotherapy sessions, she relapsed in October 2010. The next chemo treatments were so intense that she temporarily lost her vision and ability to walk.
Though a rigorous search began for an appropriate stem cell donor — Sabrina herself participated in many testing drives — her half-Hispanic, half-Arabic ancestry was expected to make the search for a genetic match that much harder.
In fact, no matches were identified in all of the United States.
But when the search went international, Eule was identified as a perfect match. He had been tested a year and a half earlier when someone in his own German town had been searching for a donor.
Julie Contreras, marrow account manager for Be The Match at Lifesource, said the fact that Sabrina's match was found in a man of purely northern European descent almost defies logical explanation but for what she says was the presence of God.
“It's a one-in-a-million shot to be a match with someone,” Contreras said. “It's double that with Sabrina's ancestry. It's like winning the lottery.”
Eule said that while preparations for his emergency donation — just before he was planning to study for six months in New Orleans — was a rigorous and tiring process, he felt privileged to agree to it.
“It was, for me, an awesome feeling,” Eule said of the news that he was a match for someone in America.
A survivor must be cancer-free for two years before he or she can meet a transplant donor. Eule said he now plans to stay in touch with Sabrina and her family for life.
“I want to see her growing up,” he said. “She's really a part of me.”
While Sabrina's parents — Natalia Wehr of Mount Prospect and Mahmoud Chahir of Chicago — are no longer a couple, they have been united in the struggle to restore their daughter to health.
Both said they were moved beyond words to finally meet Sabrina's savior.
“I'm very thankful to meet Max,” Chahir said upon Eule's arrival. “It's like all those hard times never happened.”
But so important was Eule's decision that Chahir said he almost welcomed the interruption of all the other people at the event who wanted to talk to the heroic donor.
“I'm trying to avoid him because I can't thank him enough,” Chahir said.
He delights in seeing his daughter taking ballet and piano lessons and exercising the wonderful imagination she developed during years spent in hospitals by creating and telling uplifting stories.
The two former strangers now united by blood each had a gift for the other.
Eule had a necklace for Sabrina that she immediately put on to wear for the rest of the party.
Her gift to him was a silver pocketwatch that was inscribed “Love, Sabrina” on the front. The back reads, “Time Passes, Memory Fades, But Hearts Never Forget.”
As Sabrina continues to recover from the effects of her many radiation treatments, family friend Carol Horwath said donations for her medical and other related expenses can be made by mentioning her full name at any Chase Bank branch in Illinois.