What special measures were taken to find a donor match for a possible bone marrow transplant?
When Lydia was diagnosed with leukemia, one of our first concerns was what we would do if she needed a bone marrow transplant, given that she was adopted from China. We knew that in China, children are abandoned anonymously, and it would be difficult if not impossible to find her birth family and parents. We also knew that as an Asian, her chances of finding a bone marrow match would be slim. Little did we know initially how right we were: it turned out that Lydia was one of the Hakka peoples, a minority group in China, and as such, Lydia didn’t even match with the hundreds of thousands of donors in the Chinese and other Asian marrow donor banks. Providentially, a doctor from Lydia’s home province in China, had just joined the medical team at Akron Children’s Hospital, and after meeting us and Lydia, he immediately got in contact with Lydia’s orphanage in China, and started a publicity campaign to find her birthparents and family. Lydia’s story was seen all over China, including newspa
