Janet Liang equates finding a bone marrow donor to going to a baseball stadium of 15,000 people and hoping that one person in the crowd, chosen at random, is your match.
The odds are not great.
And the problem is only exacerbated for patients of minority races like Liang, a fifth-year international development studies student who was forced to postpone completing her degree at UCLA despite being only two classes short because she was diagnosed with leukemia. Liang was diagnosed on Aug. 24, 2009 and taken to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center the next day for treatment. She started chemotherapy, although doctors told her that a bone marrow transplant was her best chance for recovery.
While battling through a 10-month treatment program of intensive chemotherapy and searching for her own bone marrow match, Liang has started initiatives to help other cancer patients and educate people about the need for bone marrow donations.
Her efforts include creating a website and a blog about her experiences, working as a patient advocate at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, and contacting organizations to further her work.
“I’m collaborating with two major non-profits: Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches and Asian American Donor Program, and I have my own grassroots movement that I started to pitch the story out there and get it known,” Liang said. “My goal is to have everyone see how I was dealing with the whole process of having cancer.”
Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches, a nonprofit organization devoted to registering minorities for bone morrow transplants, is holding a bone marrow drive in Bruin Plaza this week as a part of Bruin Health Week. The drive started Wednesday and will continue through Friday, and it is the second drive the organization has held this school year. At the drive, students are only required to register to be a donor and have a sample of their DNA put into the registry, which is done through a cheek swab, said Brian Jung, a UCLA alumnus volunteering at the drive.
Approximately 200 students registered as bone marrow donors at the first drive, and the organization hopes an equal or greater number of students will register this week with the increased publicity from Health Week and the unprecedented request for participation from Janina Montero, the vice chancellor for Student Affairs, according to Gloria Chi, an Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches outreach coordinator and a UCLA alumna.
Minorities, who are vastly underrepresented in the bone marrow registry, are especially encouraged to register at the drive. Of the 8 million people registered, only about 30 percent are minorities. Seven percent of people in the registry are Asian, and 10 percent are Hispanic, Chi said.
“Patients are more likely to find donors in their own ethnic group, so it’s important that we increase the diversity of the marrow registry,” she said.
Considering UCLA’s diversity, the university is an ideal place to hold such a drive, Liang said.
“There are a lot of groups focused on specific minority curves, especially in terms of health and health education,” Chi said. “There is that tradition already here and we are just building upon it.” The campus is an attractive drive location for more reasons than just its diversity, though. Liang describes the community-centered and proactive nature of UCLA students as a basis for why so many students registered at the last drive.
“At UCLA, I feel a lot of the graduates are willing to do things for the community, and I think that’s what I’m most proud about UCLA,” she said. “We are so proactive about what we need to do to get things done. We talk about it, but then actually do it.”
Currently, Liang is in her seventh round of an eight-round chemotherapy regimen. The eighth and final round will last through the duration of June, at which time she could potentially be in remission without having a bone marrow transplant.
“I really don’t know if I will need it. If chemotherapy puts me in remission, then I’m good and I can relax for a little bit,” Liang said. “But if the leukemia returns in three to four years, then I will need a bone marrow transplant, and at that time, you really want to have a match.”
Though she has not found a bone marrow donor, her work, in collaboration with drives put on by Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches and Asian American Donor Program, has resulted in the registration of 3,791 new potential bone marrow donors, a number that is tracked on her website.
Her goal is to reach 15,000 new registrants, although she concedes that it will take some time.
“To be honest, it’s going to take a while. I’m thinking I could be recovered and it would still take me two years or something,” Liang said. “It’s a goal I just wanted to set for myself.”
Even if Liang doesn’t need a transplant, Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches will continue to hold bone marrow drives at UCLA and other universities, as patients are continually in need of bone marrow transplants and are searching for matches, Chi said.
“I don’t care if you’ve done some things you are not proud of, but to say that you have registered and put your name out there and are committed to someone in case they need it, you should be able to put that on your resume,” Liang said. “You can potentially save someone’s life.”