Her cancer is back

You may remember a few years ago, I did a post asking for help for my friend Christina Small who needed a bone marrow transplant to battle Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, a rare blood cancer.

Well, she had the transplant in April 2010. She was given a 30% chance of surviving the transplant. She pulled this off, made it through all the chemo, the side effects of the chemo, the long hospital stay, etc., etc.

And Christina's had two amazing, great, glorious years with her husband and two kids (daughter is now 13 years old, son is 11). 

Sadly, depressingly, frustratingly, (I can't think of a strong enough "ly" word, well, at least not a word that I'm comfortable using on this blog), the damn leukemia is back. For the third time.

Christina has two-three months left to live.

I can't believe I just typed that.

Two-three months.

What do you do with news like that? 

Well, Christina wants to spend more fun, happy times with her husband and kids. In keeping with that spirit, we're raising money to send the Small family to Disneyland for a few days and nights (any extra money will be used for spending money, a hot-air balloon ride and something to do with horses or whatever grabs Christina's fancy). If you'd like to help, click here to donate.

If you live in the San Diego area and would like to help with dinners, click here. Sign up, then type in The Small Family. (They live in the RB area.)

If you want to keep up with Christina's story, she posts here.

And if you could possibly do whatever it is you do--pray, meditate, send positive thoughts, all that will be greatly appreciated too.

The Small Family

Update on Bone Marrow Donor Drive + Misc

A quick update on Christina's Bone Marrow Donor Drive this past Sunday. Are you sitting down?
Over TWO HUNDRED people showed up to do mouth swabs!!! In fact, the San Diego Blood Bank ran out of forms at Person #198! They ended up giving people a flyer with the info about registering online. Thank you to everyone who participated!

To put all this in perspective, a drive usually gets 20 people.

And about every 200 people will yield one match. Not necessarily for Christina, of course. But mostly likely Sunday's drive will help save someone's life. Wow!

Here's a link for registering online FREE IN THE US UNTIL MARCH 28 and having a mouth swab kit sent to your house. Please pass on the word and the link.

Oh, and here's a link to the TV coverage on Sunday.

And while I'm going link crazy, here's a link to a review of i so don't do mysteries and an interview with moi by Mitch Wallace of the Sphagnum Patch. The review was in the March 2010 issue of the Mission Valley News and Views. Thanks, Mitch!

And, just so you're in the know, I'm currently in Baltimore, Maryland (much to Child #4's chagrin!) doing school visits, chilling (LITERALLY! It's cold and rainy here!) and eating crab cakes. No doubt, my next post will be about Baltimore stuff. ;)