Eneias Freitas, Painter

Once again someone with a heavy bone marrow connection fell out of the ceiling and into my lap.  I mean this is getting out of hand, but I love it.  Here’s the deal, I was on the phone doing an interview on The Marrow in Me with CNN Radio.  Eneias Freitas, who we hired to paint the interior of our house, was just outside my home office spackling the wall and keeping an ear on the conversation. 

When I hung up the phone he asked, “What do you do?”

“I’m on TV and I wrote a book about being a bone marrow donor,” I told him.

“Really?  I just registered as a potential bone marrow donor too,” he said while pulling his National Marrow Donor Program ID card from his pocket to show me.

I was talking with CNN’s John Lorinc about the critical shortage of minorities on available donor rolls and here’s a guy in my house (Eneias) who knows exactly what I’m talking about and he’s recruiting fellow Brazilians and other minorities to get their cheeks swabbed.  About a hundred or so of his friends and family members registered at a church in Framingham, Massachusetts to support the Icla da Silva Foundation.   

This is kind of the story of my life and so much of what I’ve written about in The Marrow in Me.   Chance people come into my life with stories similar to mine and then we discover our common ground by accident or divine design.

So Enias picks up his phone and dials out, gesticulating wildly while talking in Portuguese.   Turns out he’s talking to his amigo who has a radio show, the largest Brazilian radio show in New England, 650AM WSRO.  Brazil is the fifth most populous country in the world with almost 193-million people.  I need to brush up on my Portuguese, entender?

I’m not the only person who thinks Kareem Abdul-Jabbar missed a golden opportunity to speak up about the inequality of available medical treatment for people of color in a cause that hits very close to home for him.   Jim Braude, of Broadside with Jim Braude wants me to come on his program to talk about it.

Here’s the fuss and you heard it here first.  Last week Kareem announced he’s fighting leukemia and is in remission.  He went on CNN and talked with the LA Times.  Neither brought up the fact that minorities are vastly underrepresented on bone marrow donor rolls.  For the medically challenge, bone marrow matching and transplant to cure as many as 75 diseases goes almost exclusively along racial and ethnic lines.

Kareem probably didn’t know about the shortage of minority donors.  He doesn’t need a donor, at least not now; and hopefully he won’t ever have to.  But if he did he’d probably be facing what thousands of others in the minority community are facing, a 20-30 percent less chance of finding a donor than someone who’s white.

My issue with the omission is this:  if you’re going to make yourself the face of a cause like leukemia, you need to know what it is you’re talking about.  Fully.  I’ll let you know what else Kareem missed and I’m sure my pal Braude will have an opinion too.   Join us Thursday night at 6pm for Broadside with Jim Braude on NECN.

Jim Braude, Host of Broadside with Jim Braude

One of the greatest athletes of all time announced he’s been battling cancer for some time.   Technically Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s in remission for chronic myeloid leukemia, cancer of the blood and bone marrow.   He’s 62-years-old and has a good chance to beat it with advances in oral medicine.

I have to admit I couldn’t stand the man when I was a boy.  Most of it had to do with the fact that his Lakers beat up on my hometown 76ers.  I didn’t like his goggles and that unstoppable sky hook either.  But I’ve come to admire the man.  I am now a fan of Kareem because of what he represents–a fighting spirit and a goal to educate people about leukemia.

Who knew a 7′2″ black man and a 5′9″ white tv sportscaster had some much in common?   Why bring up race?  Because it matters in bone marrow typing and transplants.  Hopefully Kareem won’t have to get to that point, but if he did his best bet of  finding a matching bone marrow donor would be in the black community.  I know what I’m talking about.  I’ve been a bone marrow donor, researched the issue extensively, and wrote a book about it.  Unlike blood, bone marrow typing falls almost exclusively along racial and ethnic lines.

Author Kevin Walsh after having bone marrow harvested from his bones. A 16-year-old boy received Kevin's marrow in a transplant.

When one is sick with any of 75 disorders that can be treated with bone marrow transplant–leukemias being among the biggest–doctors first look within the patient’s family.  But even then there’s only about a 25-percent chance they’ll find a match from a family member.  They’ll then turn to the outside world of international bone marrow registries.  For a person of color the chance of finding an unrelated match is about 20-30 percent less than it is for someone who’s white.

Cancer doesn’t discriminate, but the numbers don’t lie.  It’s a tougher road for minorities because they’re largely underrepresented on donor rolls.  Awareness would certainly help and there’s no better time than now to put the word out about the need for more people, especially blacks, latinos and asians to take the initial steps to register as a potential bone marrow donor.  November is National Bone Marrow Donor Awareness Month.  I like to say everyone is a match for someone somewhere.  It’s just a question of whether they’ll get sick, and will you be ready to help?

To join the registry visit the National Marrow Donor Program’s Be the Match registry.