Bone Marrow Donor Sought for Woman

Until a couple of weeks ago, few of Maria-Ressie Basilan’s friends knew she had leukemia. As far as the Port Hueneme resident was concerned, it wasn’t any of their business.

“I don’t really tell my friends,” said Basilan, 21, who was diagnosed with the disease in 1981. “I try to keep it to myself as long as I can.”

A couple of weeks ago, however, she began telling everyone.

In 1990, after six years of remission following chemotherapy treatments, Basilan relapsed. In April, she had a second relapse. It was then that Basilan’s doctor told her she needed a bone marrow transplant.

Now, as much as she hates the idea, Basilan wants people to know about her disease. She and her mother, Tessie Hacuman, have begun a public appeal--to the extent of preparing flyers to put on car windshields--to find a donor.

“I don’t like all the attention. If it were up to me, I’d crawl under a rock,” said Basilan, a student at Oxnard College. “But like my mom said, I need it.”

Basilan’s physician, Dr. Stuart Siegel of Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles, said she is in remission again. But her leukemia has proven resistant to chemotherapy and without a transplant, “she certainly has a significant chance of relapsing in the next few months,” he said.

It’s difficult for anyone to find the right donor, but for Basilan, a native of the Philippines, it’s been particularly hard.

“Our tissue types and marrow types are inherited,” said Jennifer Sugimoto of Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches, a Los Angeles-based group that works in conjunction with the local chapter of United Blood Services and the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry. “You are more likely to find a match with somebody of the same ethnic background.”

For Basilan, that means looking for someone of Asian and Pacific Islander descent. That group, said Sugimoto, makes up just 3.8%--or 32,000--of the potential donors listed on the national registry. None of those donors is an appropriate match for Basilan. Her mother, father and brother were also rejected.

“It’s frustrating looking for donors. You don’t know when you’re going to find one,” said Basilan. “It’s hard waiting.”

For Basilan, waiting for a donor does not mean sitting idly by the phone.

“I just go out with my friends and I don’t think about it,” said Basilan. “I don’t like staying home wondering if it’s coming today.”

Hacuman, Basilan’s mother, plans to meet with the Filipino American Council of Ventura County for help contacting the approximately 13,000-member Filipino community of Ventura County.

“We just need to do this until we get a lot of people,” she said.