Team Ashlyn clears major marrow transplant hurdle

Sibling rivalry isn’t an issue in the Reinstra household.

It’s because the whole family — as well as the entire La Conner community — is on the same team.

Team Ashlyn, that is.

And the team is savoring a major triumph this week in the ongoing battle by Ashlyn Reinstra against a rare strain of leukemia.

She cleared the first hurdle in her current phase of bone marrow treatment, begun two weeks ago in Seattle, with the successful donation of stem cells from younger brother Erick, a La Conner High student.

Her parents, Aaron and Jamie Reinstra, received the good news on Sunday.

“Ashlyn has a cell count today,” Jamie confirmed. “That means Erick’s cells are in her bone marrow, setting up shop and starting to produce.

“This is Aaron’s best Father’s Day gift ever,” she said.

Ashlyn, a former La Conner High soccer standout and starter on the Skagit Valley College team, began feeling ill last fall.

After undergoing a battery of tests, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Hardly the news the family wanted to hear.

But they’ve since embraced the same relentless, positive approach which has marked Ashlyn’s play on the soccer pitch.

They have taken heart in the fact she is being treated at the University of Washington Medical Center, where the late Dr. Don Thomas, known as the Father of Bone Marrow Transplants and a 1990 Nobel Prize winner, was a professor emeritus.

Dr. Thomas was also a long-time fixture at the nearby Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

“They have the best people coming in and out of here,” Jaime Reinstra said during a phone interview from the hospital earlier this year.

Her youth and athletic training have also worked in Ashlyn’s favor.

Not to mention the soccer star’s loyal and devoted fan base, one that has banded together to host a series of public fundraisers and market those striking royal blue “Team Ashlyn” tee-shirts that are seen daily in and around town.

Behind the scenes, Ashlyn has in a quiet and courageous manner dealt with the rigors of transplant therapy.

The transplant process itself took four hours and required two bags of cells. Recovery wasn’t immediate. There was nausea and discomfort. The fourth day was particularly miserable, Jaime noted.

But about a week later, there were initial signs Erick’s cells had indeed grafted to Ashlyn’s bone marrow, letting — in Jaime’s words — “the magic begin.”

The first of those signs, akin to something one might see on TV or in the movies, is Ashlyn’s blood type has changed from A-negative to A-positive, which is Erick’s type.

Close siblings are now closer still.

It’s a bond, in fact, like few others.

“Erick,” Jaime stresses, “is her savior.”