Io

Linking Up

Local volunteers form an international network to
help bone-marrow transplant patients and their
families.

Your Dad has cancer.

• •
• •• „
He's always been there for you,
helping you through hard times, sharing your dreams.
Now he has cancer. And it's your turn to be there for him.
Will he ask you for the help he needs?

'

•

. .

• •

•

• •

Don't make him ask.
Call the Cancer AnswerLine and get the facts.
Find out about treatment options and second opinions.
Ask us what you're afraid to ask him.

Feeling helpless is no help at all.
Call us today.

Cancer AnswerLine

1-800-865-1725

Call 9 am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday.

Comprehensive Cancer Center

"
t
—1 University of Michigan
=.- -2/
--1C 1-= Health System

The Detroit Medical Center
Huron Valley Hospital
and Ambulatory Services

are pleased to announce the association of

Milford Health Care Clinic

1265 Milford Road
Milford, Michigan 48381

effective May 13, 1996

to schedule an appointment, please call

(810) 685-3600

Wayne State University

The Detroit
Medical Center

Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-8 p.m.
Saturday 8 a.m.-2 p.m.

•

What Ms. Weiss found to be
hen University of
Michigan graduate stu- the most difficult part of the ex-
dent Keren Stronach perience was not knowing what
was first diagnosed to expect or if she would survive.
"One of the saddest things I
with chronic myelogenous
leukemia in March 1993, she have ever had to do was to say
hoped to succeed in forcing it into good-bye to my 2-year-old daugh-
remission with more conven- ter because at that time it was
good-bye," Ms. Weiss said. "So
tional protocols of therapy.
Treatment after treatment few people had gone through
would at first appear successful. with this and survived that it
A drug to lower her white blood- didn't look good."
The veritable dearth of infor-
cell count worked for a while and
then didn't. Interferon also was mation outside of medical jour-
at first "very successful"; nine nals surprised Ms. Jacobs.
"There were more and more
months later it showed signs of
failure.
"It would have been
wonderful if it had
worked," she said.
As a last effort, Ms.
Stronach, 29, decided
to opt for a bone-mar-
row transplant. While
she was able to find
journal articles and
other medical infor-
mation on the thera-
py, there really was
nothing she could find
about the practical as-
pects of undergoing
such a procedure.
That is, until she
called the National
Bone Marrow Trans-
plant Link.
Founded in 1990 by
West Bloomfield resi-
dent Myra Jacobs, the
NBMT Link has
served about 3,000
people who are seek-
ing information or
psychological and so- Myra Jacobs heads the National Bone Marrow
cial support while go- Transplant Link from her daughter's old bedroom.
ing through the
therapy.
Aiding people from as far people who were going through
away as Alaska and Paris, the this, but there were relatively no
volunteers who staff the new resources for people going
support network match callers through bone-marrow trans-
with people of similar back- plants," Ms. Jacobs said.
Ms. Weiss agreed. She was
grounds who have had success-
ful transplants. The volunteers only able to locate one survivor,
link callers with support groups, a woman who told her repeated-
with other informational agen- ly how sick she was going to be.
"I knew I should have hung up
cies or with other people who
have gone through the procedure the phone as soon as she started
and can let people know what to repeating, 'You are going to be so
sick,' " Ms. Weiss recalled. "I
expect.
The link was conceived in the vowed to myself that should I
late 1980s when Ms. Jacobs, survive, I wanted to help people
then working to develop patient who are planning to go through
information programs for the with this."
The pair, along with several
Children's Leukemia Foundation
of Michigan, met Sandy Weiss, other volunteers, put together
a Huntington Woods resident Friends Helping Friends, a ref-
who had successfully undergone erence booklet on the subject of
a transplant to battle a poten- transplants for the Children's
Leukemia Foundation of Michi-
tially fatal form of leukemia.

PHOTO BY DANIEL LIPP ITT

JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR STAFF WRITER