SAN CLEMENTE : Argentinian Awaits Marrow Transplant

Oksana Hural had never been to the United States before, but since arriving in Orange County this week, the 19-year-old Argentinian’s view of America has been limited to hospital rooms, examination tables and laboratory equipment.

Hural is set to undergo a bone marrow transplant at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange on Tuesday. Her doctors have said that the transplant is the only cure for her three-year bout with leukemia. After the operation, Hural will spend three to six weeks in the hospital and another month here as an outpatient, said her doctor, Winston Ho.

“She said she wants to go to Disneyland when this is all over with, but until then, she has to take it very easy,” said Maria Perez, a fellow Argentinian who is caring for Hural at her San Clemente home.

Perez, a member of the San Clemente Sister City Assn., has led a countywide fund-raising drive for Hural’s hospitalization and medical expenses. Ho is performing the transplant for free.

So far, $50,000 in donations has been received, including a $10,000 grant from the Buena Park Firefighters’ Assn. The money came from a trust fund for an 18-year-old Buena Park girl, Noemi Serrano, who died before receiving a heart and lung transplant.

Perez started the drive in April after residents of San Clemente’s sister city in Argentina, San Clemente del Tuyu, wrote asking for help for Hural. The letter explained that Hural’s mother was dead, her father was ill and the tiny village had exhausted all of its charitable resources.

“Argentina is very poor. They’re in need of everything,” Perez said. “The doctors there just can’t do this kind of operation.”

Hural will undergo an “auto-transplant,” an operation using her own bone marrow rather than that of a donor. On Friday, doctors removed a bone marrow specimen, leaving small lesions on Hural’s collarbone.

“I’m not scared at all,” said Hural, who speaks only Spanish.

The thin, pale teen-ager was once given one month to live by her Argentinian doctors, but chemotherapy treatments and medicine have since put her disease into remission.

But Hural credits her family for seeing her through her illness.

“My sister came to give me strength,” Hural explained, holding tightly to the hand of her 23-year-old sister, Maria, who accompanied her on the long plane ride from Buenos Aires.

If the transplant is successful, Hural said she hopes to return to Argentina, finish her remaining three years of high school and attend college.

“I am very grateful to everyone here who has helped me,” she said. “But I am very homesick.”