MISSION VIEJO : Friends Chip In for Leukemia Victim

If a man’s wealth can be measured by his friends, Jim Chiesa is rich.

Chiesa, a 29-year-old leukemia victim, found that out this week. More than 100 friends, relatives and neighbors jammed the Oso Viejo Community Center Wednesday night in an outpouring of support for the Mission Viejo resident, who is facing a life-threatening bone marrow operation.

With his insurance benefits falling short of medical expenses, many Mission Viejo residents have vowed to rally around Chiesa and his wife and 2 1/2-year-old daughter.

Through mailers alone, supporters have raised $6,000 of the $80,000 not covered by insurance. Wednesday night’s event laid the groundwork for several fund-raisers.

In an emotional scene, Chiesa and his wife, Michelle, surprised the well-wishers by announcing that a two-month search for a bone marrow donor was finally successful. The crowd broke into applause.

For people like Jim Chiesa, who suffers from acute leukemia, life is gauged by percentages.

“Right off the bat, your chances of going into remission are one in three,” said Thomas Herzog, a bone marrow transplant survivor who befriended Chiesa after hearing about his case. “Then if you make it into remission, your chances of relapsing are 80%.”

That is what makes quickly finding a bone marrow donor absolutely critical, Herzog said. Leukemia destroys the body’s ability to manufacture healthy white blood cells that defend against disease.

That Chiesa could find a donor at all was a minor miracle. Doctors say the chance of a non-relative matching bone marrow samples is about 15,000 to 1. Only about 55,000 people in the United States are registered bone marrow donors. But those odds pale in comparison to the obstacles Chiesa has already overcome, Herzog said.

At least twice, his chances of surviving dwindled to less than 1%. Once, in December, 1988, his heart stopped for 15 minutes on the operating table before doctors were able to revive it. A few months later, Chiesa finished taking a drug that might reverse the disease. Bud Burgess, one of a series of family friends who spoke at the meeting, was there when a doctor told Chiesa the drug had failed.

“I didn’t cry in front of you, Jim,” Burgess said to Chiesa and the audience, “but that night, I went home and cried.”

Then, Chiesa said, an experimental drug became available that brought the leukemia into remission.

A former Sunday school teacher at Saddleback Valley Community Church in Mission Viejo, Chiesa said he believes strongly that “God had a part in my remission. The doctor said when he came into my hospital room that it was truly a miracle.”

But Chiesa has one more set of odds to overcome: the 45% to 70% chance his doctor gives him for surviving the bone marrow transplant. “I’m happy that we found a donor,” he said softly, “but I’m also very scared. The odds are against me, but I’ve beaten all the odds so far.”