Bone Marrow Transplant

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.

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."

The baby boy brought to mind astronauts landing on the moon -- his round face moving across the screen in a herky-jerky fashion that seemed strangely out of time. But to his mother, confined to a hospital bed 100 miles from home, the smiling boy in a camouflage suit was altogether real.Dabbing her eyes with the corner of her bedsheet, she waved to a camera perched on top of the video screen. Later, she typed out a message to her son, Derek: "How are you? Miss you already. Happy 4-month birthday.

Four-year-old David Raymondof Crofton needs donations to help pay the estimated $150,000 cost of a bone marrow transplant and follow-up care.The boy has Hurler's Syndrome, an inherited genetic disorder that can lead to heart disease, deafness, cornea clouding, mental retardation and premature death. The surgery was recently performed at Boston's Children's Hospital.The Raymonds are being assisted in raising funds by the Children's Organ Transplant Association Inc. (COTA), a Bloomington, Ind., charity dedicated to helping families raise funds for transplant operations.

Michael Kerr,a 2-year-old boy who battled cancer and attracted donations from around the nation, died Thursday in Chino Hills, Calif. Donations helped the family raise $300,000 for a bone marrow transplant from his 6-year-old sister, Tiffany, but he developed a lung infection, pneumonia, kidney failure and a brain tumor.Max E. Causey,69, foreman of the jury that convicted Jack Ruby of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, died of a heart attack Sunday in Garland, Texas. When Mr. Ruby shot him, Mr. Oswald was accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

The boy loves games of chance. He loves slot machines and playing cards and instant-win lottery tickets. He learned at an early age to count coins, and to bet them. He learned in the hospital that money comes in get-well cards.Michael Hirschbeck learned to play gin in the hospital, too. His father taught him, during the long weeks of waiting, between the chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant and seizures and pneumonia and days when he was too sick to even eat a cup of ice chips. He never asked a lot of questions, even the day his parents told him he had the same disease as his older brother, who was already dying, and that it would take his baby sister's bone marrow to save his life.

THOUGH HE BATTLES lymphoma, William Martinez is a fortunate man. He's fortunate because his friends care enough about him to throw a fun-filled fund-raiser in Ellicott City to offset his medical expenses while he recuperates from a recent bone marrow transplant at a Seattle cancer research center.Bill's Friends, as his benefactors call themselves, are bringing people together to have fun while helping their friend in need.The friends will throw a 15-hour party from 9 a.m. to midnight tomorrow at Trinity School, 4985 Ilchester Road.

They knew many of the details before they met: who was struggling and who was thriving, who had lost hair and who had grown it back, who got her brother's marrow and who lacked a donor.In an age when many people say they feel socially isolated, computers may be one of the few forces bringing folks together. Just ask the members of HemOnc and BMT-Talk -- electronic gathering places for those whose lives have been touched by cancer.This weekend, 50 people from across the continent who knew each other through online conversations that range from the intimate to the edifying had their first face-to-face meeting at Baltimore's downtown Days Inn.They included cancer patients in various stages of sickness and recovery, as well as their spouses, children and parents.

It was an after-church coffee hour with a twist, as members and friends of St. Matthew's Greek Orthodox Church in west Columbia donated blood samples in an effort inspired by a congregant who is considering a bone-marrow transplant.Sunday's event, which took place after the congregation's regular service at Slayton House in the Village of Wilde Lake, will help build the list of donors for the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) Registry, a computerized registry of more than 2.25 million donors.

THURMONT -- Friends, neighbors and others in small towns here in northern Frederick County are mobilizing to help cancer victim Shannan Zahn raise money for a potentially life-saving bone-marrow transplant.Churches are sponsoring submarine sandwich sales and recycling drives. Others are conducting car washes and pizza parties. A country and western dance, golf tournament and auction also are in the works.The goal is to raise about $40,000 -- Miss Zahn's family's share of the $200,000 procedure.

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.

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 child - a little girl who, with her bright smile and dimpled cheeks, could easily allow her parents to forget about the deadly disease with which she was born. 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 host a bone marrow donor recruitment drive at Crofton Woods Elementary School.

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 host a bone marrow donor recruitment drive at Crofton Woods Elementary School.

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.

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 child - 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 host a bone marrow donor recruitment drive at Crofton Woods Elementary School.

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.