Newsday.com: Woman who found marrow donor continues efforts after transplant

LINCOLN PARK, N.J. -- Pia Awal's desperate search for a bone marrow transplant launched a nationwide campaign to help recruit more donors of South Asian descent. Now the 29-year-old is marking five months since she battled the odds and had a lifesaving transplant.

Awal and her fiance, Tim Dutta, returned home to New Jersey last week after months of follow-up care in Seattle, where she underwent the procedure in November.


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In between doctor appointments and deciding on a date for their summer wedding, the couple is busy working to increase the number of donors available to help others facing the ordeal they did when Awal suffered a cancer relapse last June.

"Our work is not done at all," Awal said recently from her Lincoln Park home. "This cause is an even bigger focus in some ways now."

Their organization, the South Asian Marrow Foundation, is aimed at helping patients pay the expenses related to finding a match. The group is applying for status as an official donor recruitment group for the National Marrow Donor Program.

They've also helped develop a series of public service announcements that feature celebrities of South Asian origin, including actress Parminder Nagra from NBC's "ER" and "Bend it Like Beckham," and Manu Narayan and Ayesha Dharker from the Broadway show "Bombay Dreams."

Awal, who was first diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in June 2002, initially was told that the odds for a lifesaving transplant were slim. Her best chance was from another person of South Asian descent, among the most underrepresented groups in the nation's bone marrow registry.

At the time her Web site was launched, only about 60,000 South Asians were listed as possible donors. They've now helped sign up nearly 17,000 people since friends and family began organizing drives around the country last June. Volunteers helped get more than 12,000 of those tested in just 14 weeks. A perfect match for Awal was found in October from an overseas donor.

Finding the donor, though, turned out to be only the beginning. Awal battled painful side effects after the transplant, including ulcers in her mouth and digestive tract that made it difficult to eat and talk for weeks.

Her hair is now growing back, but she always must be mindful of preventing infection _ avoiding hugs and handshakes and forgoing certain foods. She won't be considered cured of leukemia until she reaches the five-year mark.

Still, she remains a source of inspiration to the roughly 30 other South Asian patients currently awaiting a match. At least two other patients of South Asian descent have undergone transplants since Awal's procedure in November, Dutta said.

Awal is grateful to the anonymous donor about whom she knows little other than the person's choice to provide her with lifesaving cells.

"To me when we found out that she was an identical match, I was like, 'Wow, she's like my sister.' That's how I felt."

She is also deeply grateful to Dutta for standing by her side and spearheading the efforts to save her life.

"If it hadn't been for this, I wouldn't be sitting here _ that's the reality of it," she said. "He found me a donor, he helped me get through this. He was there for me from the day I was first, first, first diagnosed and he chose not to leave."

Dutta now serves as executive director of the foundation they started. He keeps a regular online journal on the MatchPia.org Web site, which has received more than 1.6 million hits since it went up and continues to get between 5,000 and 6,000 hits a day.

Weighing on his mind, though, are the dozens of e-mails he gets from caregivers of patients waiting for lifesaving news like the call he and Awal received last fall.

"I don't know where our future is going to go, but I truly think that Pia challenged the whole notion of 'How far would you go for love?"' he said. "Personally, we were able to go the first distance, and the second distance, and the third and we're in the last leg."

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On the Net:

Match Pia: http://www.matchpia.org