A perfect match
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Thirteen years ago, journalist Ibby Caputo underwent a bone marrow transplant in the US to treat an aggressive form of leukaemia. Because she is of Northern European descent, she believes she had a greater chance of survival, after finding a donor who was "a perfect match." Her friend, Terika Haughton, who was Jamaican, died of transplant-related causes in 2017. Terika did not have a perfect match, and after she died, Ibby explores how much that lack of a perfect match may have played a part in her death. Through these contrasting stories, Ibby explores race and ethnic disparities in healthcare.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, you're listening to a perfect match on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:05.0 | It's a personal story about bone marrow transplantation |
| 0:08.0 | that illuminates a much larger story about health care disparities in the U and it all started with a very close |
| 0:15.8 | friendship. |
| 0:19.8 | Okay. |
| 0:21.6 | My name is Tereka Haunn and I'm from the beautiful country of Jamaica. |
| 0:27.0 | I just want to say that I'm happy to be here. I'm happy that I met Ibib Caputo. She is very moody at times, but she understands |
| 0:40.8 | my crazy. So we're perfect. The yin to myq's laugh again and again. I'm Ibibi Caputo, the yin to her gang, the white to her black. |
| 1:05.0 | Trican I called ourselves blood sisters because we were a tight-knit support group of two. |
| 1:10.0 | In the nine years we knew each other, there was one story we would tell every time we saw each other, the story of how we met. |
| 1:18.0 | Okay, let's just tell this story. |
| 1:20.0 | I walk in, I'm very tiny, I'm shaky, and I have a cane and I'm bald. |
| 1:28.0 | And she wore those horrible chemots. Shoot me now. And I was wearing my favorite bright pink sweater because I wanted to look good for my doctor. |
| 1:39.0 | Horrible. Cliche. |
| 1:41.0 | It was 2008 and I had just walked into the blood lab at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston for my weekly blood check. |
| 1:49.0 | Whenever I saw someone in the waiting room around my age, I tried to sit next to them because it's |
| 1:55.1 | lonely being a young adult with cancer. |
| 1:57.8 | So I sit down and I'm like, I like your style. And so I say tongs and then I realize she's not going to understand. |
| 2:07.0 | I said thank you. |
| 2:08.0 | Because that was Patroix. And then I look and I see her wristband and I'm like she's sick and I said it's not my usual |
| 2:17.0 | clinic day I'm here for a consult for transplant and she said oh I did a transplant too actually it was more like that's what I just |
| 2:28.0 | did and she's like I did not expect this at 26 and I gave her the look like what the hell |
... |
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