In 1997, Rose Sparks sat at a table with nine doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital discussing the plight of her five-year-old daughter Lauren. The news was dismal. Lauren had been diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a rare congenital condition caused by the bone marrow’s inability to produce adequate blood cells. Lauren needed an immediate bone marrow transplant to save her life. All the members of the Sparks family had the relatively-rare B+ blood type, but first Lauren’s father and mother, and then her three older brothers had been eliminated as possible bone marrow donors.
“One of the surgeons’ pager kept going off and going off, and he was ignoring it,” Rose says. “I was just crying, crying, crying. We had run out of time to give her any hope.” The surgeon finally went out in the hallway, and when he came back in, he had good news. “He said, ‘Her twin brother is a perfect match!’ That’s what the pages were about,” Rose says. “God was saying, ‘Hey, hey! Listen to me here!’”
Five days later, five-year-old Lane donated blood marrow to save his twin sister’s life. Although it was the first time he came to her rescue, it would not be the last.
Unexpected additions to the family
When the twins were five years-old, Lauren bumped her head at preschool; the site of the injury was bruised and swollen for days. A doctor assured Rose that Lauren would be fine, but a cat bite a few weeks later was more ominous. “The next morning, she had fever, and her hand was triple the size it was supposed to be,” Rose says. She called a friend, an orthopedic surgeon, who instructed Rose to take Lauren to the hospital immediately.
Lauren required surgery to relieve the swelling in her hand, so bloodwork was ordered. When lab reports showed an alarmingly low platelet count, doctors suspected leukemia; however, Lauren was soon diagnosed instead with aplastic anemia.
The next year was a blur for the Sparks family. “I remember picking up the cat and the cat bite and the swollen hand, but I don’t remember very much after that,” Lauren says. She was given chemotherapy to wipe out her own immune system before receiving Lane’s bone marrow; then bone marrow was extracted from Lane’s hip and given to Lauren via IV. “It has a homing device,” Rose says with a smile. “It knows where to go.” Because her immune system was so fragile, Lauren could not have any visitors other than her parents. “I remember talking to her on the phone,” Lane says.
“It was heart-wrenching to have two of your babies hurting and scared,” Rose says. Lane soon went home and resumed his usual routine, but Lauren did not. She was at Texas Children’s Hospital for four months, and returned many times during the following year because of complications. Eventually, life returned to normal. Annual check-ups at Texas Children’s Hospital showed no cause for alarm. Little did Rose suspect that Lauren’s health would take a drastic turn for the worse when she was a teenager.
Another rare diagnosis
As Lauren’s health failed, she required multiple blood transfusions. “At first, it was every six months, and then every three months, and then monthly and then bi-weekly,” Lane says. The Sparks family called these transfusions “fill-ups.” During this time, Lauren was a competitive barrel racer on the high school rodeo circuit. “Lauren would have to go get a ‘fill-up’ before we left,” Rose recalls. “We left town, and she would win, and we would come home! People didn’t realize what she had to go through to get where she was.”
On the day of the donation, blood went from Lane’s right arm through a centrifuge that separated the blood into its components. Stem cells were removed, and the remaining blood was returned to Lane’s left arm. The process took almost all day, and Lane’s achiness went away almost immediately. After Lauren received the stem cells, her bloodwork showed improved cell counts and her need for transfusions was greatly diminished. The Sparks family is praying that the stem cell transplant will improve Lauren’s health; however, because of the deterioration of her organs that has already taken place, she might one day need a kidney transplant. A donor has already stepped forward. “I will do it,” Lane promises.
Barrel racing therapy
Throughout Lauren’s illness, barrel racing has helped her cope. “When I can’t ride, it’s very depressing,” she admits. “When I win, that boosts me up a lot.”
“She has taken me everywhere,” Lauren says. Horse and rider seem to have a special connection; Belle even seems to sense when Lauren wins a barrel race. “She’s special. She’s the queen and she knows it,” she says. “She’s spoiled,” Lane says with a smile.
Lauren was a competitive barrel racer in high school, and then joined the Lone Star College-Montgomery rodeo team in 2011 for its first year of competition. The Sparks family is grateful to Shooter’s Station, which sponsored Lauren, and James Zipperer, an economics professor at LSC-Montgomery who, as the faculty adviser for the new rodeo team, took Lauren under his proverbial wing. “He got everything done for us,” Rose says.
After two years at LSC-Montgomery, Lane and Lauren went on to attend Sam Houston State University. Today, Lane stages newly-constructed homes in Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas, while Lauren is a card-carrying member of the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association. Although she has won many cash prizes, she is humble about her barrel racing success. Rose, however, is more forthcoming.
“She has just done remarkably well to have had the bumps in the road she has had to go over all the time,” Rose says. “We are her cheerleaders. We are so proud of her for the things she has accomplished.”