`Will You Marrow My Daughter?’ An Appeal From a Mom

By: Veronica Leighton

 

This month of April, let me share with my dear readers a couple of interesting letters from two wonderful ladies with different purposes in trying to reach out to you. The first one concerns a Mom’s (Mrs. Kathryn Jalbuena) appeal for help regarding her daughter’s rare disease, Multiple Myeloma, needing a bone marrow donor, and the second one is from a good writer on her reflections about her two worlds, her past and present, Mrs. Pureza Pacis, in time for the Lenten season, noting to the editor, “I found your magazine to be well-rounded and catering to a wide spectrum of readers.” Let’s welcome these two wonderful ladies for their contibutions… .

“Dear friends,

I am a mom with a heavy heart. Please allow me to explain.

WILL YOU MARROW MY DAUGHTER? Tracy Jalbuena, age 43, devoted wife, mother of two sparkly children, and ER physician.

Tracy and her dad (from Iloilo) both have a rare plasma cell disease called Al Amyloidosis. It is not familial and has not been seen before in first degree relatives. The world over!

Now Tracy has an aggressive form of Multiple Myeloma, a blood cancer which also arises from the plasma cells, and she desperately needs a donor stem cell transplant for survival. Guess what? There is no matching donor! Not ONE person out of 11 million in the National Marrow Registry can give Tracy the life saving stem cells she urgently needs.

Why a scarcity of donors? Tracy happens to be of Filipino and European American ancestry and there are not enough Filipino American people who are aware of the need to donate healthy stem cells to a sister or brother Pinoy. Her dad has Filipino, Spanish and Chinese lineage and I have Irish and German, so you can see the challenge. Our melting pot society is melting faster than Asians and other minorities are signing up to be potential donors. A donor must be of similar ethnicity to the patient in order for the transplant to be successful. Pure Filipinos, indeed all Asians, are under represented in the data bank as well.

Who would have thought that the beautifully-blended heritage of our precious daughter would one day limit her very life? Tracy grew up in Ohio, attended medical school at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and had residency in Emergency Medicine at the Ohio State University. She had practiced her chosen profession for only three years when she became sick. Oh, how she loved her work and had earned the respect of the patients and her colleagues!

Our family is carrying out a campaign to enlist Asian Americans, specifically Filipino Americans, and, yes, all young people to enroll in the National Marrow Donor Program. It is quick and easy to register online. Anyone age 18-44 can go to BE THE MATCH (bethematch.org), sign up and receive a free home cheek swab kit by mail. Within a few weeks, their tissue type will be in the data base which is scanned by transplant teams for the patients who are waiting. Tracy is one of those patients. Are you, or is someone you know, her hero donor?

The donation process is much easier than it was in the past. The donor has an IV line in each arm and their blood passes through a machine which removes the new stem cells. Only infrequently do doctors use the old method of aspirating marrow directly from the bone.

The Jalbuena family would be honored for Fil Am families to join in this effort. The lives of many Asian Americans with leukemia and other blood diseases may end much too early for lack of a donor. The only way for our sweet grandchildren to grow up with their mom in their lives is for kind, generous people to step forward and commit to sharing this exquisite gift with another! You have a special ability, by virtue of your Pinoy heritage, to take part in a miracle and help find a match, a marrow mate, for a sister or brother. Our Filipino American compatriots are the most charitable and kindhearted people. We have faith that if only they knew of the need for marrow donors, they would respond in great numbers.

My husband and I always knew that our first born, a daughter, was a “matchless” one-of-a-kind. Tracy has a personality that stands out and shines brightly! Yet she seems to be in a class of her own when it comes to misfortune, too. The rarest of rare diseases and no matching donor because of her uncommon ancestry.

I am not giving up! I have told Tracy that I am hosting the “Mother of All Marrow Drives”! I would take my cherished daughter’s disease upon myself if I could, but I cannot. So I turn to our Fil Am friends for help. I have faith that our God loves us and that He listens to our prayers. Would you kindly pray for Tracy and encourage your family members, age 18-44, to make that profound promise to donate to a friend in need if called upon?

To learn more about the search for Tracy’s donor: marrowme.wordpress.com caringbridge.org (tracyjalbuena in visit box) bethematch.org aadp.org

May God bless us, each and every one! Salamat!” Kathryn Jalbuena Dr. Jun Jalbuena jalapeno1@roadrunner.com ****************

 

A LENTEN COVENANT
By: Pureza Ramiro Pacis

“Unthinkable! Unheard of! Absurd!” I do a Topol/Tevye from “Fiddler on the Roof”. I was referring to the title of the above book being launched by Mary Schmich, from Chicago Tribune. She’s on “Windy City Live” talking about this compilation of some of her Pulitzer Prize-winning bi-weekly columns, title of which she says was suggested by her Mom who largely inspired her.

” Great job,” I agree,” but as for the title, uh-oh, not that easy,” I refute her on TV, as I think of the illnesses, accidents, super storms and tsunamis that have befallen our family.

DADDY DIED DURING THE WAR, leaving us orphans – Manong Rolly, 4 years old; myself, 3; and Elenita, 1.

Lola Rosa helped manage the household while Mom taught at the nearby Central School. The following homilies of mother and grandmother are still ringing in my ears.

‘Makaturog,’ makamukat, ti nasalukag, agbiag” ( Rough translation: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” );”Ti nasadut, uray agtudot’ balitok, saan makapidut” (Even if it rains gold, a lazy man cannot pick it up”);“Many hands make light work”; “A place for everything and everything in each place” ;“Do everything with love”; “Squash is vitamin A, good for the eyes.”……

As though not enough, Manong Rolly had a heart attack at 36, leaving a widow and orphans – 2 years old , the other, newly-born.

When our eldest son was rehearsing by himself for his graduation recital at the auditorium, he thought he saw the heavy theater curtains eerily moving. At even time, Mommy had just slipped away. Just when things were getting better!

REMEMBRANCE IS A MIXED BLESSING. Some people like to remember what’s difficult, as a way to save life, or to understand it. Others try to forget.

I can still hear the District Supervisor in the faculty room, lambasting “What, just a mere teacher questioning my decision? “ She was trying to alter the music contest rules after my pupil has already been declared winner. “Just”? “Mere”? Double jeopardy! Right after the faculty meeting, I filed my resignation!

That same summer break, I took the Board Exams, thirteen years after graduation, and luckily passed it. I’d been on detour for so long!

I thought I had crossed a mountain. How wrong I was. You cross a mountain to find another mountain! From one step, I moved to another and then another, but managed to remain as steadfast as I should.

Long before the pork barrel issue of Napoles’ fame (?), there were those project proposals I found favorable – not to the beneficiaries, but to the proponents! Unwilling to endorse same for approval, I became unpopular to the powersthat- be. Time to go, I retired at 62, as just a mere deputy director!

HUBBY AND I ARE TWO IN THE PHENOMENAL STATISTICS on grandparents in exodus. With a beautiful lake and immaculate gardens surrounding us, the setting is calm and lovely. In our subdivision, which has houses on one side facing the elevated train tracks, it is quiet except when a freight train passes by. A light breeze blows across the lake and waxes me nostalgic. Was it all worth fighting for underdogs? What if I came sooner? Or later?

I FOUND THE BOOK – at the Public Library, from where we borrow books, CD’s, VCD’s , the likes of “Fiddler on the Roof”, “Bells at St. Mary’s “, and other movies hard- to-find… for free! There it was – fresh from the oven: Copyright Chicago Tribune 2013! G-r-e-a-t A-m-e-r-I-c-a!

Half of the year, though, there would be more fun in the Philippines. Sister. Family. Friends. No place like home, and home is Vintar, where the heart is. Don’t we have the best of both worlds!

MARY SCHMICH offers advice, humor and discerning commentary on family milestones, travel, politics, loss and survival. Her words are simple but powerful. Bull’s- eye. She’s candid, warm, brilliant, and full of insight.

She and Barbara C. Gonzales, my local favorite columnist, have the same style. Their subjects are both universal and personal. Poignant. They let you see, hear experience as if you were really there when it happened. If I could do it like anybody, I would do it their way. In fact, I had always wanted to go to Barbara for tutoring classes.

Oh, I miss the aroma of the crisp printed STAR in a way no one ever will. I just have to contend reading her and Jim Paredes, Lucy Torres Gomez, Mamintal Tamano and from the INQUIRER, Nestor Torre.

Thank God that I can get fresh news from back home from the grocery magazines! That’s how I came to know VIA Times!

Author reflects wisely on the world and brings to life the city she so loves .Although the individual stories are set against the backdrop of Chicago, some situations and circumstances, such as poverty, repeat themselves in every time and place. You don’t have to be a Chicagoan to appreciate it.

Who are you in the book? Me. You. We. In the many hats we wear !

There are thirteen sections, first of which is dedicated to columns about coping with her mother’s aging. Didn’t I tell you I can see Me ?

MOMMY’S VOICE IS INTO MINE as I tell my grandkids. “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Finish your plate, many kids go without food. Carrots, Squash, Vitamin A, good for your eyes. French fries (sitaw) and yellow spaghetti (himba-ba-o/ frozen)- yummy, and the sabaw), too.”

Perhaps that’s what grandparents are for! I whisper to myself, God is so good. God is blessing us, all the time, in all circumstances. For a while, He wanted us to live life on less…… and for a good reason!

I hope my family will likewise read the book If I win the lotto, it can be a gift to friends.

On this Lenten Season, I remember Mary Schmich’s Chapter on “Gratitude”:

“You don’t have to be old to appreciate the beauty of life. When it’s all done, Beauty and Sorrow are one and the same. It’s all life. That is what Life is all about. The things that hurt your heart, wound your pride, drain your hopes, leave you lost, and confuse you to the point of madness. That’s life with its endless, shifting sensations and its appalling urgency and its relentless drive toward mystery. But to see the beauty in the terrible things and the gratitude from those moments – that’s an elusive art. All the best times have grown directly out of the worst times. What feels like manure often turns out to be fertilizer. The hard times make you whole. They make you play the entire keyboard. They allow you to experience the full range of the most basic thing we give thanks for: being alive.”

HAPPY EASTER! The Season extends up to 40 days after the Resurrection. May the Risen Lord grant you more successes in life.