Many of you will visit this blog and see a “pop-up” talking about a young woman named Christine. What’s that about? Maybe this will shed some light on it.
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Drastic Shortage of Filipinos in Bone Marrow Registry
Filipina has 3 Months to Find Donor: Christine’s Story
By Jasmin Mizal Alcantar
** “Emergency, 911″?
“Please help me, my friend is dying! She’s in a lot of pain, and I don’t know what to do!”?
** “Stay calm. Everything will be okay, someone will be there shortly”?
“Help us, please! She’s dying, she’s dying”?
Life-threatening situations, as the one just depicted, happen every day, and we live in our communities knowing that help is just a phone call away. Just dial 911, and in minutes, someone will come to save us.
The safety of our children, siblings, parents, and friends is always in the back of our minds. If we are among the fortunate, we can ensure the safety of our loved ones, and do our utmost to make sure nothing dangerous threatens those nearest to us.
For the Pechera family, the story is different. The urgency and helpless fear associated with a life-threatening emergency has been drawn out into hours, days, months. Help is beyond just a phone call away. In fact, tremendous pleas have been made, and extreme suffering has been endured, but no hero has come to the rescue yet.
To put yourself in their shoes, imagine being a parent and helplessly watching your child die. Imagine being a brother, a sister, a cousin, and a best friend, and losing that special loved one right before your eyes. Now imagine all these stories weaved into one family. Three of the four Pechera children share something dark in common. Francis Rex, Jocelyn, and Christine were stricken with the terrible and incurable disease, cancer.
Cancer chooses its victims randomly and mercilessly, no matter how innocent. The Pechera family was cruelly struck three times, and lost its battle once with Francis Rex, diagnosed at age 12 and having lost his life to cancer at age 16. Francis Rex was fortunate, however, to have had a matching bone marrow donor - - his older sister, Christine. She selflessly gave him a dose of her marrow, and won him four more precious years. The Pechera family suffered another serious panic attack when the oldest daughter, Jocelyn (now a successful dentist and fellow-Atlantan) was struck by Hodgkins disease during her college years. She caught it early, valiantly beat it, and has been in remission ever since.
The second oldest, Christine, once the hero who fought cancer for her brother, now needs a donor herself. Three years ago, cancer struck the Pechera’s a third time when Christine was diagnosed with a rare, very aggressive form of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. The doctors gave her a single month to live, and her father wanted to bring her home to New York to die. But she stayed in L.A. and fought hard, bravely undergoing almost-lethal chemotherapy and risky cutting-edge treatment using her own good bone marrow for transplantation. Recovery was excruciating as her body literally rebuilt its immune system from ground zero. The transplant worked, and Christine celebrated the 1-year anniversary of her remission last August. Feeling blessed, this young lady treasured her newfound life, falling in love and pursuing a successful career in film-making.
But darkness fell once again last December. During a routine check-up, doctors discovered the cancer was back worse than ever, spreading quickly and invading Christine’s organs. Unlike before, they are not able to salvage any of her own bone marrow for transplanting. Her only hope is finding a matching donor. Without a matching bone marrow donor, Christine was given less than 1 year to live.
Plainly and simply, Christine has 3 to 4 months to find a match; otherwise, any attempts at transplantation will not likely succeed, and she will most certainly die. The donor must have Filipino blood. Chances of finding a match are 1 in 20,000 because there are that many different types of bone marrow. To date, no donor for Christine has been found in the National Bone Marrow Registry (in which Filipinos are the most underrepresented minority). Without a combined effort from every possible donor (at the very least, 20,000 more Filipinos), the Pechera family will spend next Christmas mourning the loss of their beloved Christine.
How many losses does one family have to endure? How much pain does one family have to suffer? How could a family go home to a Christmas dinner with warm smiles on their faces, when there are only four people present instead of six? It is difficult to contemplate, and unbearable to fathom.
We belong to the Filipino Community of Atlanta, a young family enjoying our precious baby boy, and expecting a little girl in May. Experiencing parenthood for the first time makes Christine’s story even more poignant, more earth-shaking to us. My husband uses a very vivid description of experience, called a “brain smell”?. For instance, there is a smell that a baby has that lets you know he is yours. It’s that sweet baby smell that never leaves their clothes no matter how many times you wash them, and after many years you can pull those clothes from storage and still smell that special scent. Our son cries, and we comfort him. He laughs, and we laugh with him. Many years from now, we will remember and re-live that smell, that cry, that laugh. I’ll remember when he clings onto my leg, shy because all other kids want to play with him; or when I take him outside and the cold crisp winter air hits his face as he digs his chubby little hands into my arms, laughing with excitement. We lock these memories away for safe-keeping, and pray that nothing will rob us of our dreams of watching our children grow and thrive.
But memories are all that Mr. and Mrs. Pechera have of their son, long gone. They have, and are currently experiencing, that which lurks in every parent’s worst nightmare - outliving their children. They outlived Francis, helplessly watching him become consumed by cancer and infection. They are now outliving Christine, as time ticks away and her body holds off the cancer, waiting for the miracle donor to empower her battle. With each passing day, her chances grow slimmer, and by this summer, there will be none.
We’ve never met Christine; she is the sister of our dear friend, Dr. Jocelyn Pechera. However, she may as well be our own sister and loved one. As a community, and more definitively, as an extended family, it is our hope that everyone would join in helping beat this evil, insidious monster. Anyone can be a donor. But if you are of Filipino blood, please realize that your small but precious donation could likely give Christine, and similar beautiful souls, another chance at life, while ensuring the salvation of our loved ones against cancer, now and in the future.
And perhaps one bright sunny day, Mr. and Mrs. Pechera will receive that long-awaited answer in a phone call, stating, “Yes, we’ve found a match. Everything will be okay, someone will be there shortly”?
For more information, please visit SaveChristine.com, or call 1-800-MARROW2 to find out how to join the National Registry. Registering will make your blood sample automatically available for Christine, as well as other patients who are waiting desperately for a donor.
This is the best way to help Christine, and the only way to register for free. Also, to expedite the process for finding Christine’s match in time, please identify yourself as a friend of Christine Pechera when you register.
Thank you.
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I encourage you to post this elswhere..anywhere you can. Forums you’re a part of, blogs, etc. Please help in the fight to save Christine’s life. If you are infact filipino, register! See if you are a match! You could help save this woman’s life! There’s no waiting, we have no time to wait…
).. thought I’d share it with you all.
