Bone Marrow Transplant

Q: At the time of my operation for breast cancer, the pathology report showed that the cancer had spread to a large number of lymph nodes under my arm. Because the cancer has spread, my doctor has told us that the standard treatment offers less than a 40 percent chance of living for five more years.I have heard that treatment involving a bone marrow transplant offers a better chance of survival than the usual form of therapy. Do you agree?A: There is no clear answer to your question at the present time.

Good Morning America's Robin Roberts returned to the anchor desk this morning, five months after taking temporary leave for a bone marrow transplant. Her welcome back included a video message from President Obama. "I keep pinching myself and I realize this is real," Roberts said about her return. Roberts had to get the transplant after doctors diagnosed her with the rare condition myelodysplastic syndromes, or MDS. MDS is a group of disorders that cause the bone marrow to produce an inadequate number of helathy red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.

Judy Marsh, the Pasadena woman fighting Blue Cross/Blue Shield to pay for a bone marrow transplant that could rid her body of cancer, could receive a decision today.Marsh's medical records were faxed from North Carolina -- where she is scheduled to undergo the procedure -- to Washington last night.They will be reviewed by officials in the Office of Personnel Management, which sets coverage guidelines for people covered under BC/BS's federal benefit package.Meanwhile, Marsh, who lives in the 7900 block of East Shore Road, has talked to a lawyer and said she will file a lawsuit if she is turned down again.

Mia Loizeaux, whose four-year struggle with a rare form of cancer shaped her determination to become an oncology nurse and help others similarly afflicted, died Thursday of the disease at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Canton resident was 31. The daughter of a businessman and a homemaker, Mia Loizeaux was born in Baltimore and raised in Phoenix, in Baltimore County. Ms. Loizeaux attended the Bryn Mawr School and graduated in 1999 from the McDonogh School, where she had played field hockey and lacrosse.

Kim Brittain has cried plenty over the past few months, but yesterday she wept tears of joy.That's because doctors have scheduled a bone marrow transplant for her 2-year-old son, Austin, after neighbors and strangers rallied to raise $56,000 to pay for the operation. Brittain tearfully thanked everyone who sent money, cards and letters."The response was overwhelming, more than we thought," Brittain said yesterday from her Norrisville home in Harford County. "I just want to let everyone know that Austin is doing well, that he is strong, and that we are so grateful."

Thomas J. Bradley, 47, a Long Island teacher who won a highly publicized court battle last year to get medical coverage for a bone-marrow transplant to fight AIDS, died Sunday of an AIDS-related illness in Manhattan.

A young cancer patient recovering at home from a bone marrow transplant died two weeks ago after receiving an improperly mixed intravenous solution that apparently caused her heart to stop, Johns Hopkins Hospital officials said yesterday. Brianna Cohen was given a solution prepared by the Johns Hopkins Home Care Group that contained nearly five times the prescribed amount of potassium, said Dr. George J. Dover, director of the Hopkins Children's Center. Because an autopsy was not performed, Hopkins cannot say for certain what caused the girl's death Dec. 4. But Richard P. Kidwell, a hospital attorney, said the elevated potassium level probably triggered an irregular heartbeat that caused her heart to stop.

On June 28, 2003, ANTOINETTE E. (nee Chell), beloved wife of Rudolph Castagnera; devoted mother of Robert and his wife Mary, Ronald and Al Quaranto Karen Castagnera and her partner Surita Goche; dear sister of Louise Marsheck, Bernard Chell and Raymond Wilkerson; grandmother of Elizabeth Castagnera and Meghan Long. Friends may call at the CONNELLY FUNERAL HOME OF DUNDALK P.A. 7110 Sollers Point Road on Tuesday from 4 to 8 P.M. where service will be held at 6:30 P.M. In lieu of flowers please make donations to Bone Marrow Transplant Fund in C/O Jason Marsheck Suite 230 3475 West Chester Pike Newton Square, PA 19073.

BOSTON -- Contrary to their earlier assurances, Paul E. Tsongas' doctors now say that he suffered a recurrence of lymphoma in 1987, less than a year after undergoing an experimental bone marrow transplant, and was treated with an additional course of radiation for the cancer.Mr. Tsongas said in an interview Monday that he did not recall his doctors saying that a biopsy of a lymph node from his armpit in the summer of 1987 showed cancer, as the doctors say they did.Mr. Tsongas, who is the first known cancer survivor to run for president, has remained free of lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, for five years.

MOUNT AIRY - Town officials are asking for community support and encouragement on Saturday for a Mount Airy woman stricken with leukemia.The Town Council recently passed a resolution proclaiming Saturday as Susan Hornick Day. Hornick learned in March 1989 that she has acute myelocytic leukemia.Hornick, a mother of two, has been undergoing radiation therapy. In the comings weeks, she will go to the University of Kentucky Hospital, in Lexington, for a bone-marrow transplant that could save her life.

Mark Gregory pauses as he relives the time when he nearly died. His gaze trails off into the distance and words fail him as he ponders a past he prefers to keep behind closed doors. Yet, he's willing to dredge up those painful events for a purpose. The River Hill resident is marking a huge cancer-survival milestone by throwing a party Sept. 30 at the Ellicott City VFW Post for dozens of his closest friends and business associates. But it won't be just any party. It will be a fundraiser to benefit the American Cancer Society's Hope Lodge in Baltimore, a temporary residence for adults receiving outpatient cancer treatment, where he stayed decades ago. Maybe it was the realization that he's beaten incredible odds — it's been 20 years since doctors handed him a death sentence — that finally spurred him to take action.

The Canton neighborhood has discovered how good it is to give back. In the past four years, as an old convent found new life as a home to dozens of bone-marrow transplant patients and their families, Southeast Baltimore residents and business people have brought meals and love to families caught up in complicated medical treatments that stretch over many months. The Believe in Tomorrow House at St. Casimir — just off Canton's O'Donnell Square — has become the focus of neighborhood goodwill.

Nickolas Benjamin Pippen, a chemical engineer and volunteer, died Aug. 13 of complications from a bone marrow transplant at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Joppatowne resident was 26. Mr. Pippen was born in Baltimore and raised in Joppatowne. He was a 2000 graduate of Joppatowne High School, where he played first base on the school's varsity baseball team and was a member of its golf team. He earned a degree in chemical engineering in 2005 from the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Fifteen months ago, the pain from Pamela Newton's sickle cell disease was excruciating. She spent more time in the hospital than in her Capitol Heights apartment. She was on 15 pain pills a day, all heavy narcotics. She was bleeding regularly and needed daily transfusions of platelets. She had just months to live. Today, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital say that Newton is one of the first adults in the world to be cured of sickle cell disease - and the first using an experimental bone marrow transplant that could cure thousands like her who have been told they will never get better.

On an Internet chat room popular with breast cancer survivors, one thread - called "Where's My Remote?" - turns the mental fog known as "chemo brain" into a stand-up comedy act. One woman reported finding five unopened gallons of milk in her refrigerator and having no memory of buying the first four. A second had to ask her husband which toothbrush belonged to her. At a family celebration, one woman filled the water glasses with turkey gravy. Another could not remember how to carry over numbers when balancing the checkbook.

If you have cancer, is there any way to get some of the benefits of a bone marrow transplant without all the risks? Yes, it's called a mini-transplant. In a normal transplant, blood stem cells and immune cells are taken from the bone marrow or blood of the patient or from a well-matched donor. After the patient has high-dose chemotherapy and radiation to destroy his own marrow (and with luck, his cancer cells as well), the marrow or blood cells are re-infused into the patient to grow a new immune system and blood.

The Rev. Bert Benz's condition continues to improve and has been upgraded from critical to serious.Doctors are pleased with his progress, said Kay Yeltin, spokeswoman for the Markey Cancer Center, University of Kentucky, in Lexington, where the Hampstead minister has been a patient for nearly a month.Benz, pastor of Faith Baptist Church, has chronic myelogenic leukemia. The 47-year-old received a bone marrow transplant from his daughter, Lauren, 12."The reverend has been moved from the intensive care unit," Yeltin said Friday.

If Paul Tsongas had won the Democratic nomination and been elected president, Americans now would be facing the uncomfortable prospect of having transition talk interrupted by updates on chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Rather than focusing on hopes for economic recovery and a fresh approach to problems plaguing the nation and the world, the country would be consumed with worry about the health of its new leader.That unsettling possibility raises fresh questions about the obligation of presidential candidates to disclose medical records that most citizens have every right to keep private.

Even before the starting gun sounds for Sunday's Columbia Triathlon in Howard County's Centennial Park, 19-year-old Kellian Kennedy will be a winner. Even though she has never run a race, and the last time she rode a bike, she says, was years ago, the University of Maryland freshman from Gambrills will attempt a difficult athletic endurance challenge: nine-tenths of a mile of swimming, 25 miles of biking and 6.2 miles of running. Those tasks are difficult enough, but the fact that Kennedy is competing is made all the more incredible by the past eight years of her life.

It's been four years since Carol and B.J. Diamond's infant daughter, Cameron, underwent a bone marrow transplant - a risky, complicated medical procedure - to beat the leukemia that was threatening her life. Since then, the Crofton couple have watched Cameron grow into a healthy toddler - a little girl who, with her bright smile and dimpled cheeks, could easily allow her parents to forget about the deadly disease she was born with. Instead, the Diamonds have vowed never to forget it. Tomorrow, they are joining more than a dozen of their Crofton neighbors, along with a team from Johns Hopkins Hospital, to hold a bone marrow donor recruitment drive at Crofton Woods Elementary School.