fxmartini/leukemia

Phil Burn's 22 month old daughter was recently diagnosed with ALL (childhood leukemia) and will be undergoing chemotherapy for the next 2 1/2 years. Phil and his wife Adria are going to have their hands full. They have 8 kids, Phil's in the middle of putting a startup together, and this is going to be a huge drain on their time and on their finances.

Phil's business partner Jesse Stay has started to collect some funds using a ChipIn widget, which is now posted in the top right hand corner of his blog.

"In a pioneering study, we tested a Bay Area family for a suite of chemical pollutants. The results stunned even scientists."

Yesterday I posted about a study in Houston showing a higher incidence of Leukemia in children who lived in a particular area of the city. Ironically today I saw this story on CNN.com and then found the original story on the Oakland Tribune site. Scary, scary stuff and what really hits home for me is that this family lives in Berkeley, which is about 10 miles away from where we used to live in California.

Am I surprised about the levels of chemical pollutants they found? No, but I am angry. How many children have to die before people wake up. While the overall survival rate from Childhood Cancer has been increasing each year due to medical advancements, the incidence of Childhood Cancer (particularly in urban areas) is also increasing after heading downward for many years after the banning of certain cancer causing pesticides during the 1970s.

"No one can say for certain that Valentin's illness was caused by the air he breathed, but earlier this year, the University of Texas released a study showing that children who live within two miles of the ship channel have a 56 percent greater chance of getting leukemia than kids living elsewhere."

Sadly I'm not surprised by this in the least. When Alex was diagnosed with Leukemia we were living in Vallejo, CA which has 5 or 6 refineries located within a 20 mile radius There are also several Superfund Cleanup sites including one only a couple of miles away from our house. Luckily we were able to move out of there immediately after Alex's first transplant, but I know a lot of people in the same situation can't afford to do that.

From the Article:

"Leukemia might kill Wayne Mangan, but he's saving lives in the meantime.

Eight drives organized by Mangan and his friends have failed to find a bone marrow donor for him, but they have found tentative matches for six other people.

Mangan couldn't be happier.

'I might die with this disease,' he said. 'But I know darn well what we are doing will save someone.'"

We found out about Wayne Mangan earlier this week when we made our donation to Cascade Regional Blood Services (CRBS). Wayne has CML (Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia) and has not responded well to Gleevec, which is the primary treatment for this disease. At this point his best chance of survival is to find a bone marrow donor, but so far a willing match has not been found.

The Church for All Nations in Tacoma will be hosting a blood/marrow drive in Wayne's honor on Saturday, May 20th from 8:00am to 4:00pm. The Church for All Nations is located at 111-112th St. East, Tacoma, just east of 112th and Pacific Ave. If you live in the Tacoma area please come and support this event by bringing friends and family. A huge BBQ for all will be provided and they are hoping to break the National record for the largest one-day bone marrow drive.

If you don't live in the Tacoma area, visit the The National Marrow Donor Program website for information on where you can sign up for the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) Registry.

-- Todd

P.S. After we left CRBS on Wednesday we went to Red Robin for dinner and my wife struck up a conversation with our waitress Lori about their respective kids. Lori pulled out a photo of her daughter Nevaeh and we saw that she was bald. It turned out that Lori's daughter has ALL (acute lymphocytic leukemia) and the whole family have become good friends with Wayne! (The little girl in the photo w/ Wayne above is Nevaeh!) What are the odds that we'd decide to go to Red Robin for dinner that night and get the one waitress there whose daughter has Leukemia and who knows Wayne? My life is just a series of strange coincidences!