We're delighted to report that our meeting with Suzie's donor went well. We met him, and his parents, at a restaurant in St. Louis where Bruce and Suzie had well over an hour to both eat and learn more about each other. He's as kind as we hoped and is even willing to spend time counseling a donor brought into the fold by the drive Lisa engineered earlier this year. This is all so amazing.

Last week, we traveled to Boston to spend time with Lisa, to participate in a 'Light the Night' fund raising walk for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and to help raise funds for the MPD Foundation. Although back to back Northeasters forced us to cancel on the walk, Suzie and Lisa raised more than $500.00 selling hand crafted items donated for this purpose by friends and family and/or items they'd made themselves. All who participated by crafting the items sold or in the sales effort are pretty kind themselves!

Talk about courage: all this has been achieved in spite of an acute bout of graft versus host disease. Left untreated, this caused a significant rash as well as painful swelling and itching in both of Suzie's feet. Doctors were able to offset these symptoms through the aggressive use of Prednisone but these treatments led to the loss of body weight and muscle tone as well as a significant increase in her sugar levels. We're tapering off now and are prayerful that we won't have another bout with steroid induced diabetes.

We'll keep you posted!

Mike