Heal Emru

[elfie_elfie]

One of the people on my flist here has a brother with leukemia.  He needs a bone marrow transplant.

http://www.heal-emru.com/

His sister is not a match, and his genetic type is woefully underrepresented in the international bone marrow donor registries.  If you are or have any friends of West Indian and African descent, I urge you to check out the

Comments

[kino_kid]

Thanks so much for posting this.

(Emru writes about animation, pop culture and technology for a living, although he did go to school in animation.)

Thanks very much for urging people of our ethnic background to go register, increasing the chance of a match. At the same time, Emru's match could come from any other group even if the chances are slimmer, so people should not forgo registering because they don't think they will match (besides other people need it).

As you said, there are hundreds like him who need this. In Canada. There thousands in the US, thousands in the UK, and others in many other parts of the world. All of the registries work together, so it doesn't matter where in the world your match is.

[elfie_elfie]

I just sent off a small donation to the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation (it's the research hospital in Toronto that specializes in cancer treatments and care) in Emru's and another friend's names. (Paul's cancer was a brain tumor; his chemo and radiation treatments have been done for a few months now, and his monthly CT scans tell his care team he's officially in remission. May Emru be as fortunate.)

[kino_kid]

That sounds great. I hope everything continues to go well.

I bought three copies of a book called Goes Down Easy from the Princess Margaret Foundation last week. My aunt flew from Jamaica to see if they could help her when she was sick.

[janamon]

I'm glad you posted this. I looked around on the website and will go back to it to pursue registration. As you know, I recently lost someone to a type of lymphoma which is on the leukemia spectrum. It prompts me to pursue what I didn't have time (as my friend died without ever gaining strength for a transplant) to pursue earlier. Thank you for the reminder.