Christine Pechera, a 34-year-old Filipina filmmaker, is also on the hunt for the one. But it’s more intense than the search fueled by illusions of romance. Christine is looking for the perfect match for her bone marrow transplant.
"I got diagnosed with cancer about three years ago and I went to chemotherapy and it didn’t work. And I had a stem cell transplant about 2-1/2 years ago. And after I survived the transplant, I was basically piecing my life back together. I started working again. And I fell in love," Christine, said, fighting to hold back tears. "About a month ago, they told me my cancer was back. And now I need to have another bone marrow transplant and that this time I need to have a donor. The problem is there aren’t enough donors."
Christine has a rare type of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a blood cancer in the same family as leukemia, a condition wherein the lymphocytes in the system start growing uncontrollably until it starts crowding the system. In Christine’s case, the bad cells lodged in the middle of her chest. Survival rates are not good. And doctors sadly noted that the fact that it’s the same kind of cancer as the first one she had means it did not respond to earlier treatment.
After what they thought was a successful stem cell transplant two years ago, Christine and people close to her thought everything was back to normal.
"After two years, they say you’re not out of the woods; but you’re doing good. And I was feeling really healthy. I never would’ve guessed that it was coming back. That’s why it was so upsetting because I didn’t feel that there was something wrong with me, at all. So the first time they told me, I didn’t really believe them. I thought they had just mixed up my files or misread the diagnosis," she said.
Christine recalled that she actually spent the holidays in bed. A week before Christmas, she had to go for biopsy and because the surgery put her in a lot of pain, she was forced to spend Christmas in bed. Little did she know that her nightmare was only beginning a second chapter.
"And then two days after Christmas, just before the New Year’s, that’s when we got the news that there was something bad happening. But they didn’t exactly tell us what it was. They just said they’ll talk to me after New Year’s ‘cause I think they wanted me to have a good New Year’s," she said.
After the holiday celebration, the bad news came: Christine’s cancer was back.
"Medically, the only option Christine has left is a bone marrow transplant," Jakob Krueger, her boyfriend who’s now spearheading blood drives in order to find a match for her, explained in a mass e-mail he’s been distributing on the Internet. "The survival rate of this procedure is 30 to 40 percent. Of those who do survive the procedure itself, only 50 percent survive the next two years. However, if she does survive those two years, it means the cancer won’t come back." But the search for a match is not easy. According to statistics, 30 to 100 potentials are needed in order to find a single match. And in order to find a single potential, 20,000 donors are needed. But the donor has to be of the same ethnicity as the patient. And right now there are only 24,000 Filipinos registered with the National Marrow Donor Program.
Out of four kids in the family, three of them were diagnosed with the same kind of cancer. Christine’s older sister, Jocelyn, battled with it during her college years. She has survived and has recently gotten married. Christine is now racing against the numbers and against time.
"I’m just looking for the one person who is the key to saving my life. And we need to get as many people signed up on the donor registry as possible. All I know is that I don’t have much time left," she appealed to the public in an interview for a television broadcast.
She says she knows exactly the type they are looking for. But she refuses to announce it to encourage others who don’t have the same type as hers to still go out and register, if only to add more Filipinos to the registry for now.
"It’s not just me. There are other Filipinos out there waiting for their match and don’t have much time left," Christine said, adding that doctors told her that if she doesn’t undergo a stem cell transplant soon, she will have less than a year to live.
Any Filipino between the ages 18 and 61 is a potential donor. According to Krueger, the system is nationwide so it doesn’t matter where they live. Some hospitals charge a small fee for the blood test. But Christine said it’s usually free for minorities like the Filipinos.
The process is also not as scary as not a few may think. It only requires a finger prick to register. Krueger also clarified that signing up for the registry does not require donating any bone marrow.
"If it turns out they are a match, they will be contacted, and can make the decision at that point about becoming a donor," he said.
Christine also assured potential donors that the transplant itself is not as painful as one may think. There are actually two ways to donate: first is by giving blood in which a needle is inserted in one arm. Blood is then drawn and goes through a machine before it is released back to the other arm. The other way is by bone aspiration in which a donor lies done on his/her stomach while a needle is inserted to the pelvis to draw the marrow out. It’s just a one-hour, out-patient procedure.
"It just feels like you landed on your butt. Or like someone kicked you on the butt. That’s the kind of soreness you’ll feel," said Christine who was once a donor to her brother. "I think I’ve had more pain walking into a coffee table than doing the bone marrow thing," she added.
To learn more, or to register, visit www.christinepechera.com.
"I hope your readers won’t just read the story and say, ‘Oh, what a pity.’ I hope they would make the simple effort of enlisting in the registry ‘cause that simple effort may not necessarily save my life; but it will definitely save another’s life, somehow, someday," Christine said.