Susie Rabaca, pictured with her 4-year-old daughter, needs bone marrow transplant to help treat leukemia. (Fox 11)
A California mother of three due to give birth to twins in the coming weeks is in search of a bone marrow donor to help save her life. Susie Rabaca, 36, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in September, and only her sister was found to be a partial donor match, Fox 11 reported.
Acute myeloid leukemia starts in the bone marrow and moves into the blood, and can spread to other parts of the body including the lymph nodes and other organs. According to the American Cancer Society, in 2018 about 60,300 new cases of leukemia will be diagnosed in the U.S. Of those, about 19,520 cases will be AML.
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“Finding my match is everything to me, so I can be here for the three children I have, and the two that I have on the way, it’s everything,” Rabaca, of Carson, told the news outlet. “It’s so easy, there’s no painful procedure, there’s no surgery it’s just swab your mouth and it’s as simple as a blood draw, and you can save somebody’s life, if not mine, somebody else’s.
Rabaca is due to give birth on Dec. 6, and doctors are pushing for the transplant to occur soon after. She said she is leaning on the support from her children and relatives for strength, and refers to her 4-year-old daughter as her "Little Rock."
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“There’s 30 million people registered on BeTheMatch.org and none of them are my match, so what I need people to do is join and they send you a kit, a little swab for your mouth, send it back, and if you’re my match it’s as simple as a blood draw and that can possibly save my life,” she told the news outlet.