Ohio

A couple days after the term ended, with a month's vacation ahead of me, I hopped yet another trans-Atlantic flight back to the States. My mother flew out from California, and we met up at my brother's house in Cincinnati to visit for a few days and celebrate a few birthdays (hey little brother, the next one will be thirty!). We took the kids and all to the zoo, ate birthday cake, and generally had a fabulous time. I don't usually fly across the ocean for birthday parties, so you might be wondering why I went all the way to Cincinnati for such a quick visit.

Everyone who is family already knows this, but anyone outside the family probably has not heard. In January, my brother's little girl, Carly, was diagnosed with leukemia. She is six years old. Specifically, she's got Philadelphia-positive B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Because hers is something of a rare type of cancer, it's a little harder to cure than the usual childhood leukemia. She is now in remission after several rounds of chemotherapy, but her kind of cancer does not stay in remission without drastic treatment. So in May she will be getting a bone marrow transplant. She will be in the hospital for anywhere from a couple of months to a year recovering and rebuilding her immune system. She's got a tough time ahead of her, but so far she has weathered the hospital stays and the chemotherapy and losing all her hair before she even finishes kindergarten with courage and grace and wisdom you'd never expect from someone so young.

So if you're a praying type of person, prayers for this little girl are welcome. If you're a good thoughts/good vibes type, feel free to send good thoughts and good vibes her way. If you're a check-writing type, the Cincinnati Children's Hospital is a wonderful institution that has given Carly and the whole family the best of compassionate and competent care during this difficult time. And if you're the type that can give a little more of yourself, please consider signing up for the bone marrow donor registry. All it takes is a simple blood test to type your marrow and the commitment to donate if ever a person in need matches your type. With no matches in the immediate family, Carly would be in dire straights without the amazing generosity of the anonymous people who signed up for the registry not knowing if they would ever be called to help a stranger in need. Many people on the marrow registry never get called to donate, but there might be someone out there who matches your type, right now, facing a very short future without a marrow donor. You might just save a life.