New Blood Brings New Hope

Michelle Carew, the 18-year-old daughter of baseball great Rod Carew, was recovering well Friday after doctors performed a rare type of blood transfusion to battle the leukemia that threatens her life.

The young woman underwent the 45-minute procedure at Children’s Hospital of Orange County surrounded by emotional family members, who to no avail have waged a public campaign to find a bone-marrow donor. The rare operation involved transfusing blood cells from a donated umbilical cord to Carew, whose leukemia was diagnosed in November.

“We are very optimistic,” her doctor, Dr. Mitchell S. Cairo, said of the treatment, which has a 75% to 90% chance of success. “This is an exciting moment; she tolerated the procedure extremely well.”

Rod Carew, a former California Angels star who is in the baseball Hall of Fame, told reporters that it had been an emotional day: “It’s been unreal. I had a good cry with my family; there were a lot of built-up emotions that I just let loose today. We feel good about this, but we have a long way to go.”

Doctors opted for the umbilical cord blood transfusion, Cairo said, after a genetically matched donor became available at the New York Blood Center, from which the umbilical cord cells were flown.

“The umbilical cord blood is a special gift,” Cairo said of the procedure, so new that it has been performed only 200 times in the world and eight times at Children’s Hospital. “We’ve found that the blood that circulates in the placenta is very rich in those stem cells that have the ability to make other cells.”

If Friday’s transplant was successful, Cairo said, doctors will begin detecting an increase in Michelle’s white blood cell count in two to four weeks. Following that, he said, she will be closely monitored for possible signs of infection.

Assuming all goes well, Michelle could be released from the hospital in 6 to 12 weeks with the ability to function normally, the doctor said. And after two years of living without symptoms, Cairo said, she would have a 95% chance of being cured.

All of which was good news to Rod Carew, his wife, Marilynn, and the couple’s two other daughters, Stephanie and Charryse. The family surrounded Michelle during the entire procedure, holding her hand and giving her hugs through a protective plastic tent.

“She was awake,” Cairo said. “She was very tearful and quite frightened as we started. As she became more comfortable with the transplant, her mood changed to one of joy and happiness.”

In fact, Rod Carew said later, one of his daughter’s major concerns was for his own level of comfort. “I was crying and she wanted to make sure I was OK,” he said. “That’s the kind of person she is.”

The family has definite plans once Michelle comes home, he said.

“We’re taking her out for a lobster dinner and we’re taking her ice skating,” Carew said, adding that a trip to the mountains also is planned. “She wants to see the snow falling.”