ORANGE : Group Tries to Help Leukemia Victim, 4

Four-year-old Dennyelle Von Bargen needs a bone marrow transplant to fight off leukemia, but with no medical insurance, her mother could not imagine how she would pay a hospital bill that doctors estimate could run to $150,000.

Four local businessmen who learned of Dennyelle’s plight, however, are hoping to make a difference with a carnival planned for Saturday in Fountain Valley’s Mile Square Park.

“Our goal and our plan is to do something like this every six months,” said Dan Gibbons, one of the event’s sponsors and a Huntington Beach businessman. Local vendors have donated food, drinks and prizes to be given away at the carnival, he added.

The carnival, which will feature about 20 games and booths from noon to 4 p.m., will be the first fund-raiser by a fledgling foundation being formed by four friends. They plan to call it “I Make a Difference” and intend to devote the organization to raising money for individuals rather than causes such as cancer or AIDS, Gibbons said. The other group members are Dan Vogelzang, Sam Kuri and Doug Sakurai.

“It’s wonderful,” Dennyelle’s mother, Karmen Von Bargen, said of the carnival plans, adding that they may help to save her daughter’s life.

Von Bargen was preparing to move to Oregon with her three children in late April when her daughter’s leukemia was diagnosed and the child was hospitalized. Without the transplant, Dennyelle’s chances of survival are 30% to 40%, doctors say. With it, the odds will improve to 60%.

And if the money can be raised to pay for the procedure, Dennyelle’s brother, 2 1/2-year-old Justin, will be called upon to give of himself as well. He will be the bone marrow donor.

“He knows he’s going to help sissy out, but he doesn’t understand everything,” said Karmen Von Bargen, who is staying with friends in Garden Grove along with Justin and another daughter, Autumn, 7.

Dennyelle, a bouncing ball of energy with a fondness for saying “No” and “I don’t know,” does not seem bothered by her situation. In isolation at Childrens Hospital of Orange County in Orange, she is surrounded by toys and family photos and has earned an affectionate reputation among the hospital’s nurses as a “wild child.”

The transplant procedure, scheduled for next month, involves high doses of chemotherapy to induce remission in the leukemia and kill Dennyelle’s bone marrow, Dr. Felicity Hodder said. Bone marrow collected with a needle from Justin’s hip bone will be filtered into a blood transfusion bag and returned through a tube in Dennyelle’s chest, Hodder added.

The bone marrow will circulate through Dennyelle’s blood stream and then, if all goes well, settle in the right spot and begin to replenish her own supply. Bone marrow makes blood cells, which are defective in leukemia cases.

Gibbons said the group hopes the carnival will raise at least $20,000.