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Monday, December 26, 2005
Sister as donor match thrilled another family
Vickie Lipski may not have been a bone marrow match for little Nicole Howard, but she left a lasting impression on the Howard family.
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| Nicole Howard | ||
"She had an amazing capacity for caring for other people," said Trish Howard, Nicole's mother, who was overwhelmed with emotion when she learned that Lipski had ended up being a match for her own brother. "It just figures it would be her."
Howard recalled that in addition to offering to donate her marrow, Lipski wrote letters of encouragement to Nicole and gave her a stuffed version of Clifford, the big red dog, then one of Nicole's favorite storybook characters.
Nicole, now 8 years old, was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia at age 4. Like many mixed-race individuals, the Asian American child has had difficulty finding a match in the national bone marrow registry.
Now on medication that has put her in remission, the family is still hopeful she will find a donor in the event the cancer returns. In the meantime, she is an active third-grader who loves basketball and soccer.
Nicole Howard's case became the launching ground for a new organization, the Mavin Foundation's Matchmaker Bone Marrow Project, which has since registered 10,000 multiracial individuals to be potential marrow donors.
The organization, which also held a drive to try to find a donor for Greg Lipski last spring, has helped about 30 people find donors, said spokeswoman Nicki Carrillo.
The group, based in Seattle, plans a new round of drives this spring with the goal of registering 2,000 more potential donors.
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