Sacramento Mom Goes To China To Find Donor For Daughter

[Kadie]

Jul 15, 2010 8:32 am US/Pacific
Sacramento Mom Goes To China To Find Donor For Daughter

LIUZHOU, China (AP) ―Sherrie Cramer breaks into stifled sobs as she nears the dirt-streaked former orphanage in China where her daughter lived as a severely malnourished infant.

Once again, Cramer is fighting to keep the child she adopted alive. But this time, it's a battle against leukemia, and the odds are not in her favor.

Without a bone marrow transplant, Katie, now 16, may die from the aggressive blood cancer. The family has just a month, maybe two, to find a donor.

The teenager has no known blood relatives and her best chance of a match will be someone from her Zhuang ethnic group, China's largest minority of 16 million. So Cramer, of Sacramento, Calif., made the heart-wrenching decision to leave her daughter and go to China in search of a donor in the city of Katie's birth.

"I needed to come and do whatever I could do to ask the people of China to help me," says the 56-year-old English teacher and mother of three, all adopted from China. "I can give her everything, I can give her love and clothes and an education, but I cannot give her genetic markers for a match."

Cramer's effort highlights the lengths to which some ethnic minorities must go to find lifesaving bone marrow transplants. The Asian American Donor Program says ethnic minorities overall have a 50 percent chance of finding a perfect match from the U.S. bone marrow donor registry of 8 million people, compared to an 80 percent chance for Caucasians.

more...
http://cbs13.com/health/sherrie.cramer.china.2.1806303.html

[LibertyLover]

1. As a parent of a daughter also adopted from China, this

story has brought tears to my eyes. I truly hope that a donor is found and her daughter lives a long and happy life.