Butcher's plight lures many to donor registry

By PETER PORCO

Anchorage Daily News

Published: December 31, 2005

Last Modified: December 31, 2005 at 05:53 AM

More than a thousand Alaskans came forward Friday to literally offer a piece of themselves to Iditarod champion musher Susan Butcher and anyone else who might be sick enough to need new bone marrow.

Butcher was diagnosed several weeks ago with cancer of the blood and is currently being treated in Seattle. She will need a bone-marrow transplant within the next year as part of the treatment.

The Blood Bank of Alaska, with Butcher's encouragement, held a drive Friday in five cities to sign up folks for a national donor registry, a list of people across the country willing to give marrow to any seriously ill person whose blood matches their own in certain characteristics.

While the odds that any person would be a perfect blood match for Butcher -- or for any other person, for that matter -- are extraordinarily small, it was the musher's name that drew Alaska donors by the hundreds.

"I've been up here for a number of years, and I want to do something for someone who has meant a lot to Alaska," said Laura Brakeman of Anchorage, as she waited to be tested at a Blood Bank station in the Dimond Center in South Anchorage.

Altogether, said Gregg Schomaker, a Blood Bank spokesman, 1,190 people had signed up to have blood drawn in Anchorage, Homer, Kenai, Wasilla and Fairbanks by 5:30 p.m., with some locations open for another half hour. Besides signing up for the donor registry, most people Friday also gave a pint of blood to the Blood Bank.

"That is incredible," Schomaker said from Iditarod headquarters in Wasilla, one of two collection sites in that town. "We should easily go over 1,200. It's just a tremendous turnout."

They didn't turn out actually to give their bone marrow, only to make their availability known. Nor did they come only for Butcher. An Anchorage man, Michael Donaldson, also lent his name to the drive. According to Schomaker, Donaldson is fighting his third round with lymphoma.

"He's at the point where he needs a marrow transplant in the next six weeks to survive," Schomaker said. Donaldson's wife approached the Blood Bank after news broke of Butcher's diagnosis of leukemia.

"This was an excellent opportunity to tie him into Susan Butcher and her situation and get as many people into the pool to find a match," he said.

Even with 5.5 million willing donors listed on the national registry, the odds of a perfect match between the blood of any two people ranges from 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 50,000, according to the National Marrow Donor Program. If there's a perfect match, the recipient of a bone-marrow transplant has a 19 in 20 chance of physically accepting the donor marrow, program officials have said. A successful transplant radically improves the chances of recovery.

Officials say a marrow donor feels some discomfort when giving bone marrow. Some donors, on the other hand, say the process can be very painful.

Many Alaska donors showed up Friday knowing that their own marrow was unlikely to be donated to Butcher. Others, however, came explicitly to give their marrow that very day to the musher. Brakeman was one of them.

"I want to give some bone marrow to Susan Butcher," she said at the Dimond Center station to Michelle Aregood, the Blood Bank's assistant director of donor services.

"What do they do?" Brakeman said. "Stick a needle in you?"

Aregood explained that a tube of blood would be taken and sent to a Seattle-area lab for testing and type identification. She told Brakeman that the woman's marrow would be donated only after her blood was matched to a recipient, who could be anyone in the country.

"Well, if not her, then somebody else," Brakeman said later while sitting in the waiting room.

"We've had three big Alaskans in the news this year," she said. "Jay Hammond died, and Norman Vaughan. I want to see Susan Butcher stick around for a long time. They done good things for Alaska, and at a time when Alaska became a laughingstock for the nation."

Allen Woodward came to the Dimond Center because he's been an avid Iditarod fan and has even flown over the race in his private plane. But he also came, he said, because leukemia killed his sister two years ago.

But the Blood Bank turned Woodward away. The oldest a donor can be is 60, and Woodward, who flew Navy Hellcats in World War II and is a retired air traffic controller, is 83.

"That's all right," he said. "Medically they can't, so that's the way it is."

Barbara Fleek, the retired director of Alaska Native Student Services at the University of Alaska Anchorage, is already on the marrow-donor list and pleased to be a donor "for whoever needs it." She came Friday, she said, to give blood.

"I give blood regularly," Fleek said. "If there's anyone I can help, I do it. I'm lucky to be very healthy, and I have three adult daughters who are so healthy."

Fleek, who is Tlingit, Norwegian and Irish, said she's concerned that not enough Alaska Natives and American Indians are receiving transplants when they need them.

Schomaker said that 70 percent of those on the marrow-donor list are Caucasian, and less than 1 percent are Alaska Natives.

"If someone in the Native community comes down with leukemia, they have a tough time to find someone to be a match," he said.

"That's the key to what Susan Butcher is doing," said Schomaker, "using her status as an Alaska legend ... to get more people on the registry to hopefully become a match for someone down the road and increase the odds for some of those individuals."

Daily News reporter Peter Porco can be reached at pporco@adn.com or 257-4582.