Prakash has his website up and running now. For more information on his treatment, drives that are organized around the country, FAQs on becoming a donor, please visit www.prakashkrishnaswami.org
Upcoming Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drives
DateCity,State
Sep 17, 2007Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania
Sep 18, 2007Cambridge, Massachusetts
Sep 20, 2007Charlottesville, Virginia
Sep 22, 2007 New York, New York
Sep 23, 2007Manhattan, Kansas
Sep 23, 2007Troy, Michigan
Sep 23, 2007Sunnyvale, California
Sep 26, 2007Ann Arbor, Michigan
Sep 28, 2007West Nyack, New York
Sep 29, 2007Louisville, Kentucky
Sep 29, 2007Cupertino, California
Sep 30, 2007Cupertino, California
Sep 30, 2007Santa Clara, California
Oct 13, 2007 St. Louis, Missouri
Given that the chances of finding a match for a South Asian is 1 in 20,000 mostly due to the small population of donors, compared to 1 in 15 for caucasians, Please think about becoming a donor.
The Pets
On a different note, all the kids are doing fine. We are looking forward to celebrating Nikko and Amy’s adoption days in two weeks and we are in the process of adopting Pepper (Finally!). We have been doing more backyard agility with Amy and will post videos soon.
We traveled last week to Kansas City to visit our friend, Prakash, who has been diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia.
Dr. Prakash Krishnaswami is a Professor of Mechanical & Nuclear Engineering department at Kansas State University, and is in urgent need of a matching bone marrow donor. However due to the low number of registered South Asian donors, finding a match for Dr. Prakash could be very difficult.
According to the National Marrow Donor Program, the need for donors is very high for ethnic minorities. The procedure for becoming a donor is easy. HLA typing is done with buccal cheek swabs, blood tests are performed to confirm a match in the national registry and if you do not want to go through the surgical procedure of donating the bone marrow, you can donate Peripheral Blood Stem Cells (PBSC). According to SAMAR (South Asian Marrow Association of Recruiters), For a PBSC donation, you will receive daily injections of filgrastim for 4 or 5 consecutive days. Filgrastim is a blood stem cell growth factor that increases the number of blood stem cells released from your marrow into your blood stream so they can be collected through an aphaeresis procedure. In this process the donor’s blood is removed through a sterile needle placed in a vein in one arm, and passed through an aphaeresis machine that separates out the stem cells; the remaining blood (minus the stem cells) is returned to the donor through a sterile needle in the other arm. Unlike marrow donation, PBSC donation does not require anesthesia, which is the most significant risk of marrow donation.
This is a good time for all of us, especially ethnic minorities, to think about becoming a donor, as Leukemia and similar blood disorders can happen to anyone. More information on the National Marrow Drive Program is available at www.marrow.org. For South Asians, SAMAR has information available at www.samarinfo.org.
Sephora’s mom sent us this really cool video of Sephora having a field day with a couple of the toys we sent her for her birthday. She is simply soooo cute and adorable!
The final post! Wow! We are tired and zapped of energy, but we made it! Even though we stated that we would write about dogs in the HA’s around us, it was tough to write 49 posts and hence we have posts about our pets too! Thanks a lot for everyone who supported us! Thanks to our sponsors without whom the exercise would have been meaningless! Thanks to the HA’s for their support! Thanks Amy, Nikko & Pepper for being patient with us during this 24 hour period! It had been a really good experience.
We bid a weary good night(day)! Though we are wrote the final post, and successfully made it, you can still sponsor for the next 24 hours. Please Click Here to Sponsor Us! Please visit Blogathon 2007, for more information. We have raised $260.00 so far. Thanks to all of our sponsors!!!
Time for me to get up!
Why do you guys look all tired & weary? What you did not sleep all night?! But why?
Any way thought I would say good morning! I guess I have to wait till later to say so!
This is a blog about our three pets - AMY - an adopted black-lab mix, who is a little more than 2 years old, but still thinks she is a puppy, NIKKO - a 10+ Jenday Conure, who is the little terror in our home and thinks he is a dog, and PEPPER, a 10+ Nanday Conure, who is the baby of the household. We have brought more joy in our lives with bringing them home. Hope you enjoy reading about them and tell us in your comments.
Bala Thiagarajan
I am a Wildlife Biologist, who simply love animals! I wanted to record our life with pets, inspired by the book Marlee and Me by John Grogan.
Sankara Raman
I am an Industrial Engineer, who was talked into owning pets by Bala. As they say, life is never the same once you bring in an animal.
