PLACENTIA : Marrow Donors Tested for Girl, 8

Officials at a Placentia elementary school and at Cal State Fullerton have launched an intensive drive to find a bone marrow donor for an 8-year-old girl who suffers from leukemia.

Almost 200 potential donors were tested Monday in an attempt to find one whose bone marrow matches that of Christina Schnabl, a third-grader at Placentia’s Charles Wagner Elementary School.

Christina has been a patient at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana and is undergoing chemotherapy, said her mother, Linda Schnabl, a music teacher in the Placentia Unified School District. Doctors expect the chemotherapy to drive the disease into remission, but it will not be a permanent cure, she said.

The Placentia Unified Education Assn., with donations from the Knights of Columbus, helped finance the testing of 173 people who might not have been able to afford the $75 testing fee, said Dale Downey, Wagner Elementary principal.

“We had a wonderful turnout, a really successful drive,” Downey said. “At first I only expected about 50 people, but the word of mouth and community support were tremendous.”

There is no match for Christina among the 87,000 donors registered with the National Marrow Donor Program. There is a one in 20,000 chance that a donor will be found. Results of tests on donors who participated in Monday’s drive will be available in about a month, Downey said.

“It’s definitely the sooner the better,” Downey added. “The more people we test, the better the odds that we find a match.”

Donors tested Monday will also be entered into the federally funded computer program as possible donors for others.

“Of course, we hope to find a donor for Christina, but we are also helping other people, and other people are helping us,” Downey said.

A second donor drive is scheduled for April 23 at Cal State Fullerton. The next drive will be sponsored by the women’s softball team, for whom Christina was a bat girl.

“They needed a bat girl, and they sort of adopted her,” Linda Schnabl said. “Now they’re coming to bat for her.”

If a donor isn’t found, Christina may undergo a new form of treatment in which healthy cells are removed from her bone marrow, frozen and stored for implant later, her mother said. The leukemia must be in remission before the procedure can be done.