Student’s health battle reveals need for donors
By Daniel Schonhaut
Nov. 4, 2009 12:15 a.m.
Janet Liang’s plans to finish her degree at UCLA and begin a career as a teacher were put on hold when doctors realized there was something seriously wrong with her health.
Liang, a fifth-year international development studies student, had been feeling increasingly ill since Janurary 2009. Severe headaches and weak limbs prevented her from studying abroad in Paris and from finishing her summer classes.
Doctors diagnosed Liang with leukemia on Aug. 24.
She was rushed to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center for treatment the following day and is currently undergoing her second round of chemotherapy at UC San Francisco.
“When I was diagnosed, I realized that my life was going to change, and certain parts of me were robbed,” Liang said. “Some things will never be the same.”
Her doctors expect chemotherapy will only hold off the spread of the disease until around May, Liang said. The most effective treatment is a bone marrow transplant.
Liang is still looking for a matching donor, and she is confronting the challenge head-on.
She contacted Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches, a nonprofit organization that works to register minorities for bone marrow transplants.
Alongside Lambda Phi Epsilon, the organization is holding a bone marrow drive this week on campus, in part to find a match for Liang.
Liang’s family and friends have offered to help organize and staff a number of other drives in the coming months, said Gloria Chi, an Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches outreach coordinator and UCLA alumna.
“Janet has been very involved in planning the drives and getting people motivated,” Chi said.
In between chemotherapy rounds, Liang has also worked to form helpingjanet.com, a Web site that tells her story and encourages people to register to be bone marrow donors.
The Web site launched three weeks ago and has registered about 400 people. The goal, Liang said, is to reach 15,000.
“I’m continuing this grassroots initiative not just to find a match for myself but for other people who need it, too,” she said.
Those who register to donate provide cheek swabs that are used to determine bone marrow type. Information is then entered into a national registry, Chi said.
Liang is focusing on convincing minorities, who largely lack representation in the national registry, to sign up. Because bone marrow matching is highly dependent on ethnicity, the lack of minority representation makes it difficult for leukemia patients from these backgrounds to find a match.
Coming from a Chinese background, Liang statistically has only a 7 percent of finding a donor, she said. For a person of Caucasian heritage, the chances are close to 80 percent, she added.
For Liang, the important thing is to not lose hope.
“If you lose hope, you pretty much lose everything. … There’s no option but to be a stronger person,” she said.
Matthew Nguyen, who graduated from UCLA in 2004 and was diagnosed with leukemia in 2006, said he agreed staying positive is key to beating the disease.
Nguyen initially responded well to chemotherapy, but his cancer resurfaced early in 2009. With no matching donor immediately available, he needed a transplant to survive.
“I thought I had gone through this long enough. … Then it was like a truck hit me from out of nowhere. It’s just news you don’t want to hear,” he said.
Nguyen worked with Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches to hold a bone marrow drive at UCLA last spring.
Having since found a match, he is 46 days into his recovery from the transplant and is beginning to regain his strength.
Nguyen offered a few words of encouragement to Liang as she continues her search for a donor.
“Take advantage of the help around you, your friends and family. … If you continue to think you can beat this and are willing to do whatever it takes, you will get through it.”
