Marrow transplant possible for young Ladera woman Marrow transplant possible for young Ladera woman (February 09, 2005)

By Rebecca Wallace

Almanac Staff Writer

After a rough holiday season, there's some bright news for a young Ladera woman fighting leukemia: two possible bone marrow donors have been found for her.

The path ahead, though, still looks difficult for 29-year-old Heather Lynch, who was the subject of an Almanac cover story last December.

Diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2003, she had been in remission but then fell out of remission on Christmas Eve. She also struggled with a serious fungal infection in her lungs during Thanksgiving and most of December.

Then the National Marrow Donor Program turned up two possible matches for a transplant. But due to the seriousness of Ms. Lynch's pulmonary infection, doctors at Stanford Hospital, where she had been getting chemotherapy and other treatment, declined to perform the transplant, said her father, Bill Lynch.

So the Lynches brought their hopes to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, which has agreed to do the transplant once the donor has been chosen, Mr. Lynch said. Ms. Lynch and her mother plan to go to Seattle this week for the procedure.

"I am making my own odds in beating this disease," she wrote in an e-mail last week to family and friends. "This is considered an extremely high risk transplant, so we are keeping our faith and just preparing for this to be a long battle. It is really scary thinking this will be the hard part of my entire treatment."

Unfortunately, there is another concern: the two potential donors aren't perfect matches. A donor and a recipient must have certain matching tissue traits, and both donors match nine out of 10 of Ms. Lynch's traits, her father said.

Recipients typically match someone from their own racial or ethnic group, and Ms. Lynch's situation is complicated by the fact that she is Caucasian with a Native American great-great-grandmother, Mr. Lynch said.

"This is as good as the national (marrow donor) program says it's going to get," he said.

If all goes well, Ms. Lynch wrote in her e-mail, she will be in the hospital in Seattle for a month and then do three to four months of outpatient care there.

"I miss working, traveling, skiing ... and all the fun things I should be doing," she wrote. "I plan to see you all at the end of this battle and can only ask for your good wishes, love and hope as we head down this road."

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