Bob Corrales, a patient at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Hospital, has suffered from acute lymphoma, a type of leukemia, since December 2007.
It began with flu-like symptoms such as achy joints, a fever and fatigue, he said.
“That’s what threw me off ““ it was late December, early January, and my coworkers all had the flu,” he said.
“We were complaining about the same symptoms, but mine turned out to be different.”
Corrales said he then began immediate treatments ““ 11 days of chemotherapy for hours every day.
And for three months now, he has been hoping and searching for a marrow donor.
The UCLA Blood and Platelet Center and the National Marrow Donor Program are now hosting a bone marrow drive on the Hill through October to find him a match.
The drive begins today from 2 to 7 p.m. in Sproul Hall.
But Corrales, 56, who has been an L.A. County sheriff for 26 years and has four children and a wife, is different from many patients.
He is half-Mexican and half-Chinese, and thus it is extremely difficult to find him a match.
“Right now, according to the doctor, it’s my best way of getting cured to have a transplant,” he said.
“Because even though I’m in remission, the cancer seems to come back.”
Faye Cortez, community liaison at the UCLA Blood and Platelet Center, said the Hill is the perfect place to look for a donor for Corrales because of the sheer number of people who live there.
He said a lot of people think about donating blood, but in his case a blood match is not enough.
Corrales needs a marrow donor, which has more to do with matching genetics.
“It doesn’t go to blood type, it’s more about finding DNA,” Corrales said.
Only about 30 percent of people who need marrow donors have found their matches, he said.
The best option for Corrales would be for a family member to donate to him, but he said that none of his family members matched.
“Of course, the related donor is best because genetically you’re already matched,” he said. “But I have three brothers, and none of them matched.”
So for Corrales, his option is a stem cell transplant, which comes from an unrelated donor who is registered after participating in a donor drive.
Patients who join the marrow registry may be contacted if they match him. When donors are found as matches, there are certain steps that prepare the match for a transplant.
“One is called peripheral blood stem cells, like giving blood,” said Vivian Abernathy, a community outreach specialist for the National Marrow Donor Program at City of Hope, a cancer research center.
“The second procedure is actually the outpatient surgery procedure, and that’s where they actually extract the marrow from the bone. But they’re put to sleep, they don’t feel anything. It’s just a discomfort.”
In the meantime, Corrales is receiving chemotherapy treatments, he said.
“I’m in remission, awaiting either a stem cell transplant or a cord cell transplant as soon as they can find a match for me.”
Corrales said the drive is really simple.
Abernathy said becoming a marrow donor is just a matter of a simple swabbing of the inside of the mouth.
“Then we send that to the lab, it’s sort of like doing a DNA testing,” she said. “Then it gets added to the national registry so that it will have that person’s results of their tissue typing.”
Corrales said the uncomplicated process could help others.
“The hardest part is just filling out the forms,” he said. “It’s not just me. It could save someone else’s life down the road.”