Happy Birthday, Ann

I feel so happy - the kind of happiness that can send the tears rolling down my cheeks.

My friend Ann, a patient at MD Anderson, just completed her second bone marrow transplant with bone marrow from an international donor. Since Ann is Hapa (mixed race Asian), finding a match is a special challenge, but the registry found a 9 out of 10 match from an international donor. The stem cells arrived this morning and the transplant went off without a hitch.

If you haven't done so already, go to her blog, anngregory.blogspot.com. It's a story of struggle, of frustration with a broken insurance system, of success, of inspiration, of relapse and more struggles. Through it all, Ann and Chris always find the strength to rise up, to keep supporting one another and to do everything possible to save Ann's life. Most of all, it's a love story of epic proportions. Read it and you'll find yourself falling in love too.

So today, I raise my glass to Ann and Chris. May those new stem cells be fruitful and multiply.