Apr 09, 2009
Help Save Angel Chittaphong
Seven-year-old Angel is the daughter of Cam and Rusty Chittaphong of Lavergne. This beautiful, playful, and healthy-looking child is not really healthy. She has a rare blood disease that if not cured, will take her life. Presently, she receives blood transfusions every month but more urgently, the attempt to find bone marrow donation that is an ideal match for her has simply not been found yet. Without a bone marrow match, she will not survive this disease.
The cure is to give her some bone marrow, about 10% of what a matching individual has, after she receives a very strong dose of chemotherapy – so strong that it destroys the cancer in her blood but also destroys the bone marrow. The bone marrow from a match from a donor is injected into her and it will replenish just as blood replenishes in both the body of the donor and the body of the person who received the blood. If a match is found, it will come from someone of Asian descent.
A lot of work has been done through the Rotary Club of Brentwood’s Bone Marrow Donation Committee to organize a drive to test many people to see if we can find a perfect match for Angel. The testing drive will be on April 25 and 26 – Saturday and Sunday – on the campus of Lipscomb University on Belmont Boulevard. The hours of this drive are from 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. All of this effort is a private activity performed by volunteers. The government neither performs these tests nor helps patients needing such a match. Now we are at the critical point of needing to test enough people so that it is possible to find a match before Angel runs out of time.
There is no cost. People who are interested in saving this little girl’s life, who are between the ages of 18 and 60, can be part of this testing drive. Anyone who will be tested simply goes to Lipscomb University, fills out a form that will be kept on file for future donors if they are not a match for Angel. A match may happen in 20 or 30 years or even more into the future. So, it is helpful when people bring their driver’s license and the contact information for relatives who may be able to help contact anyone being tested in the future.
The second part of the bone marrow testing registration is to take a cotton swab and rub it on the inside of the mouth so that each person collects their own DNA to be tested and typed by a lab.
We also need individuals to volunteer at the bone marrow drive to translate for people who speak any Asian language.
Thank you for any help you can provide to enable us to save this little girl. For information, you may contact Tom Burton* at AGAPE -- 781-3000; cell phone – 972-9657; or e-mail – tburton@agapenashville.org
* Past President, Rotary Club of Brentwood
Chairman, Bone Marrow Donation Committee
