I Found The Place: Still Searching: An important update from Janet

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Still Searching: An important update from Janet

A video update to my blog post "I Am Desperate for Help" about my friend Janet Liang and her urgent search for a bone marrow match

Janet's latest video update. Though a match hasn't been found yet there is still hope :)

When her doctors told her a few weeks ago she only had eight weeks left to find a marrow match in time they thought that current rounds of chemo would knock the cancer back enough to allow a life saving bone marrow or stem cell transplant to happen by April. Unfortunately the chemo is proving to be less effective due to the Leukemia's heightened resistance so instead of a transplant by April, Janet must now undergo several more rounds of chemo delaying her chance for a transplant until June.

The additional chemo will weaken her body even more, but delay means she now has more time to find a match for her transplant. Even with many drives being held on her behalf nationwide and with the tremendous online drive effort many of you have helped with by forwarding emails, news stories and blog posts about her need, and asking others to join the donor registry at live drives and by ordering home test kits, a match for Janet has not been located.

This extra time means we can all continue to help Janet by spreading the word that it's easy and pain free to join the registry both here in the U.S. and abroad.

Cooperative Registries

You don't have to live in the United States to help Janet. If you live in a country with a cooperative registry your stem cells or bone marrow can be flown to California to save Janet.

From the Be the Match website:

"The National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP), which operates Be The Match®, has formal business relationships with donor registries in other countries. These donor registries are called NMDP cooperative registries.

When a doctor searches our Be The Match Registry® on behalf of a patient, we can search millions of additional volunteer donors through our cooperative agreements. And patients in other countries can access the volunteers listed on our registry.

These cooperative agreements play a significant role in helping patients find matching donors. Fifty-one percent of the transplants we facilitate involve either a U.S. patient receiving cells from an international donor or an international patient receiving cells from a U.S. donor."

Click on the name of the country to view contact details about your local cooperative registry: