ORANGE : Thankful United With Lifesavers

Evalee Wheeler remembers seeing a rainbow the day she learned she was a perfect match for a dying child who needed a bone-marrow transplant. She took it as a good omen.

“I said a prayer right then,” the Anaheim resident said. “I felt a warm feeling, and I knew something was going to happen.”

Last month, Wheeler became one of the “unrelated” donors who have given bone marrow at Children’s Hospital of Orange County. This week she took part in the hospital’s annual reunion party for givers and receivers of the life-saving treatment.

CHOC is the only pediatric hospital in Orange County that performs both types of marrow transplants for patients suffering from leukemia, immune problems or other diseases of the blood, said Rita Secola, an oncology clinical nurse specialist.

In an autologous transplant, the patient’s own marrow removed, purified of any harmful cells and re-injected through the chest. If an unrelated donor supplies the marrow, the tissue type must be an extremely close match to the patient’s, Secola said.

The new marrow replicates and produces disease-free blood cells if the procedure is successful. The survival rate for transplant patients is 50% to 70%.

The hospital has gained an international reputation for pioneering procedures to advance the science of marrow transplants, said Mitchell Cairo, the physician who directs cancer research and transplantation at CHOC.

In 1993, the hospital was designated as a donor and collection center for unrelated bone marrow by the National Marrow Donor Program, which compiles a national registry of donors.

Donors who attended the reunion said the surgical procedure was much less painful than they had expected. They spent one or two nights in the hospital and were anesthetized while a doctor extracted marrow through a needle inserted in the lower back.

“I prepared myself for a lot of pain,” said donor Walter Caiazza of Moreno Valley. “It was nowhere near that.”

CHOC and other centers are seeking non-Caucasians to donate marrow. Because the tissue match must be close, race can be a factor in transplants. Caucasians make up about 75% of the registry’s 1.5 million donors.

Bill Atkinson of Virginia Beach, Va., is now considered part of the Rudat family of Anaheim. His marrow helped save leukemia patient Stephanie Rudat, now 4.

“If he wasn’t there, Stephanie wouldn’t be here,” said Farhat Rudat, Stephanie’s mother.