"He made it very clear. This is not something you can enter into lightly," she recalled. But, she said, "the transplant was my only hope."
The mother who had given her life once before gave her life again. She was Newton's bone marrow donor.
It was two months after the transplant Dec. 29, 2006, before Newton started to feel better. Slowly, gradually, the pain dissipated. She took her final OxyContin this month.
Newton, now 35, tells the story to her friends with sickle cell: "When you tell them about the pros and cons, they kind of dwell on the negative. They say, `You could die from it.' I say, `Yeah, you could, but you could be like me, too. You could be cured.'"
These days, Newton is planning for the future for the first time. Feeling a call to the ministry, she plans to enroll in Bible college in June.
"Before, I never was really thinking about what I was going to do in my life," she said. "Now I want to get back to school, go to work, maybe later on even get married, have a family.
"Somebody had to be the chosen one. I'm just thankful God chose to save my life. I'm just hopeful that somebody else will have the chance to have their life saved by this procedure."
stephanie.desmon@baltsun.com
