Butcher marrow match search pulls record donor numbers

Sunday, January 01, 2006 - by Rebecca Palsha 

KTUU 2 Anchorage

Anchorage, Alaska - It's one for the record books, one of the state's biggest attempts to find matching bone marrow. The Blood Bank of Alaska says it hasn't seen this many people donating to a cause since the terrorist attacks on 9-11. It's all an attempt to help an Alaskan legend.

Iditarod champion Susan Butcher was diagnosed with cancer at the beginning of December. What follows next, is a statewide push to help a fellow Alaskan.

Susan Butcher is a trail blazer. She's the second woman to win the Iditarod and she's done it four times.

“Iditarod has become the Everest of dog mushing, so if someone's going to do one race one time, they want to do the Iditarod, but we know from tons of people who've run in the quest, it's an equally rewarding experience,” said Butcher (right).

Now there’s a new experience for her, one that Butcher could have done without: cancer. Undergoing chemotherapy at a hospital in Seattle, Butcher says she's going to beat leukemia.

“That's what you spend your time thinking about is the positive. It’s what's feeling better today even if there’s a new thing feeling worse,” said Butcher.

Back home in Alaska after a statewide blood and bone marrow drive, the key to Butcher's survival may be just within her grasp

“We had over 1,200 people get registered for the National Marrow Donor Program Registry and I got the results that out of that, 1,147 good tubes were drawn,” said Gregg Schomaker (left), with the Blood Bank of Alaska.

That is 1,147 new chances to find matching bone marrow.

“The odds are right now, about on to 20,000 to one to 50,000 that somebody will find a match on the registry,” said Schomaker.

Schomaker says 30 percent of the time a donor is found within a patient’s family, but butcher says her sister is not a match.

“So it probably will be an unrelated donor and so what we don't know yet is if I'm a common type or a very uncommon type,” said Butcher.

So for now, Butcher hopes to lead more Alaskans into donating, trying to help everyone win the fight against cancer.

Channel 2 spoke with Susan Butcher's husband on Sunday. He says they are hoping to meet with doctors soon to see if Butcher can come home to Alaska by the end of the week.