Remember Lisa?

We recently got a letter from our dear friend Lisa.

For those of you not familiar with Lisa’s story it all started back in 2007 right around the time most of us are eating Thanksgiving leftovers.

Imagine having everything to live for - two beautiful children, a loving husband, loyal friends and a job you love - and then finding out in a blink of an eye that you are suffering from a type of blood cancer and your only chance for survival is a marrow transplant from a complete stranger. This was Lisa’s story.

Lisa, a 41 year old mother of two young children, Michael, 5 and Alexandra, 3, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Acute Myelogeneous Leukemia (AML) the day after Thanksgiving, on her daughter’s birthday. Once diagnosed, she was immediately hospitalized and went through several rounds of intensive chemotherapy. Unfortunately, the treatments were not successful and she wasn’t in full remission. It was now critical for Lisa to have a marrow transplant. Finding a donor match would be the only thing to save her life. A donor of Ashenzai or Eastern European Jewish descent would probably be Lisa’s best match.

Hundreds of New York City mothers who learned about Lisa are joining forces, sending out e-mails and organizing donor drives in Lisa’s honor.

The outpouring of support was truly amazing, thousands of people from communities across the country mobilized to help save Lisa’s life. Her story was covered in People magazine and on the homepage of their website, after Grammy winning singer Rihanna joined the fight to save Lisa.

Well, today Lisa is at 77 days post-transplant and in her own words "feeling pretty darn good".

After a rough ride in the hospital Lisa is having what she considers an easy post transplant period. She recently met another AML patient who followed her story on People.com and her website and was motivated to change hospitals and hold marrow drives to find his match. Her energy levels are up and she is no longer spending hours bed ridden. And as if that wasn’t enough she has finally begun checking her Blackberry again.

What can I say, I guess life is back to normal.