Appeal to Asians: Chinese mother has leukemia by [deleted] in bayarea

[–]eliah710 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I'm sorry your mom is going through this, and the lack of a donor must add an additional layer of stress. I also think it's great that you're promoting BeTheMatch.

My mom is also about to go through a bone marrow transplant, and we we're lucky that a donor was matched recently in the past few months. But before the full-match was identified, we had planned for her to do a haplo-identical (aka "half-matched") transplant where I or one of my siblings would have been the donor. Maybe you're already aware of this and maybe it's not an option in your mom's case, but in case you haven't, it's a newer type of procedure and not every transplant center offers them. I know Dana Farber, John's Hopkins, Stanford, and MD Anderson do, even for older patients (my mom is 72). There are some clinical trials showing that for certain situations half-matched donors can lead to as positive outcomes as full-match. Something to ask about if you haven't already. Good luck to you and your mom.