🚀 go-pugleaf

23-month-old baby girl Alana Dung will die in close to 8 weeks 
unless a compatible bone marrow donor can be found. Please join
us in an orange ribbon campaign in finding this special someone 
who can save the precious life of this little girl.

Alana, normally a feisty and active little girl favouring soccer 
balls and toy guns over dolls, began feeling uncomfortable this 
February; what doctor thought was a normal stomach disorder turned
 into a most menancing diagnosis on April 5 (Good Friday) - leukemia.
 Alana suffers from a rare, adult form of the deadly leukemia disease
 -- acute myeloid; this disease, afflicting less than 1 percent of 
all cancer patients nationwide, is slowly stripping away the life 
of little Alana. Blood diseases like leukemia disrupts the body's 
natural ability to produce healthy blood cells and slowly strips away
 the body's ability to carry vital supplies to healthy cells and 
prevents the body from defending itself from other diseases. 
Alana is currently 2 weeks into her 10 week-long chemo-therapy 
to combat and kill the leukemia disease; unfortunately this same
 life-saving chemo-therapy will also destroy what little healthy 
bone marrow that Alana has. 

Within 8 weeks, Alana will be going to Seattle, hopefully receiving
 a bone marrow transplant. This transplant will give little Alana 
a 70% chance of survival - much more than the few other experimental 
procedures available. This transplant is her only hope of survival! 
"The key thing is we don't have time", Alana's mother said last week 
>From Alana's hospital room at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and 
Children in Honolulu, Hawaii. "All we can do is pray and hope we 
find an exact match" Alana's father said moments later. 

Since early April, most of Alana's immediate relatives have tested 
negative as possible bone marrow donors and now Alana needs your help. 
Prior statistics show that chances of finding a compatible marrow 
donor is 1 out of 20,000; however, the last asian leukemia patient 
who successfully found a compatible marrow donor took close to 40,000 
searches. Currently, Alana Dung's parents, Stephen Dung and Adelia 
Chung, 
are spearheading the donor drive to save their little girl and have 
so far collected blood samples from more than 5,000 possible donors 
>From locally in Hawaii for testing. However, with just 6-8 weeks 
left before the need for this donor, there is a great need to 
expand the search national-wide and possibly internationally; 
especially targeting the areas with heavy asian ethnic population 
(such as malaysia, singapore, san francisco, montreal, new york) 
because she has a higher chance of finding a match if the donor is 
asian,
but we are not limited to these areas in selecting donors, 
she still has a chance with non-asian donors as well. 

How can you help? There are three things that you can do NOW:

1) forward this letter to everyone you know.

2) post an orange ribbon on your webpage to signify your 
participation and make it a link to 
http://www.choi.org/alana

the orange ribbon can be copied from the page at 
http://www.choi.org/alana

3) contact your local bone marrow donor registry NOW and tell them 
that you would like to register as a bone marrow donor candidate 
for little 23-month old Alana Dung in Hawaii; only a small sample 
of blood will be collected to test for possible match!
the testing is FREE, and so is the entire marrow transplant operation
should you happend to be the match:


if locally in hawaii:  808-524-6618
if in USA:	       800-654-1247 or 800-marrow2

please read the webpage for addition international bone marrow registry 
resources.

Today, Alana is quietly waiting to celebrate her second birthday 
coming in 2 weeks; tubes leading to a catheter in her chest winds 
its way under her "Pooh" shirt, delivering needed fluids and morphine, 
both poor attempts to comfort the quiet tears rolling down her face. 
Looking at her would tell you that she knows that something is terribly 
wrong, but can't do any about it. You are the only one that can help; 
help us put the smile back on Alana's face, please.