Friday night update: No matches

If you have a lucky penny, rabbit's foot, or anything that brings good luck, Bonnie could use it at the moment. Her sister was "typed" for bone marrow compatibility and she is not a match. On a preliminary basis, there isn't a match in the National Bone Marrow Registry either.

As a reminder, there was a one in four chance that Bonnie's sister would match, and an 80% chance she would find a match in the national registry. Bonnie's having a little bad luck as the odds should have been in her favor.

So what does this mean? The first priority remains getting Bonnie back into remission. Then, if no match is found for a bone marrow transplant, the next course of action is to do a transplant using umbilical cord blood. The good news about this path is that the immune system in "cord blood" is much less developed, meaning it's more adaptable to Bonnie's immune system, so the requirements for matching are not nearly as rigorous. There have been very positive results for children with cord blood transplants, but for adults it is still a bit experimental.

I talked to Bonnie on the cell today, and she sounds well. She is, however, having a course of more aggressive chemotherapy tonight which will likely leave her pretty wiped this weekend. My sense is that her physicians want to be a little more aggressive about eradicating the cancer cells, given that there may be a little longer time required to sort out the future transplant options.

Might be a good time to send Bonnie a card, letter or email. Put a four-leaf clover in the envelope for her, too.