Latest News Update directly from Amit Gupta
TODAY (18th Jan 2012)
Many of you have asked, so here's what's going on with me.
... After over 100 drives organized by friends, family, and strangers, celebrity call-outs, a bazillion reblogs (7000+!), tweets, and Facebook posts, press, fundraising and international drives organized by tireless friends, and a couple painful false starts, I've got a 10/10 matched donor!
You all literally helped save my life. (And the lives of many others.) Read more....
Amit will need all of our direct and indirect support as he faces the many hurdles and battles ahead on the road back to (relatively speaking) normal health.
ORIGINAL APPEAL
The clock is ticking for Amit Gupta.
One moment, the 32-year-old American felt fine. The next he was hit with a mixed bag of symptoms: fatigue, breathlessness and sudden weight loss. On Sept. 22, he was diagnosed with acute leukemia.
He has about six weeks to find a bone marrow match, which could save his life.The thing is, Gupta is of Indian descent and in the United States only 1 per cent of registered bone marrow donors are South Asian. None are a match.
Still Gupta remains hopeful. In large part, because of a growing movement on social media — started by his cybersavvy friends — to get people registered as bone marrow donors and find him a match. He’s not the first cancer patient to seek bone marrow online, but technology entrepreneur Amit Gupta might be the best at it.
The 32-year-old founder of do-it-yourself photography site Photojojo was diagnosed with acute leukemia in September. As a South Asian, his odds of finding a life-saving bone-marrow match are 1 in 20,000. And he has a deadline: Nov. 30.
Gupta and his social-media-guru friends have used Facebook, Tumblr, Google Plus, and Twitter to organize more than 100 donor drives across the U.S. His search has sparked the attention of several celebrities like Aziz Ansari, Anderson Cooper, Salman Rushie, and Craig Newmark of Craigslist. Major companies like Google, Amazon, Adobe, and Twitter have also held drives at their offices in Gupta’s honour.
He is mostly targeting the Indian community—college-student groups and templegoers alike—for his best chance at a match. “This just shows that every year more and more people are joining the movement to hold drives and spread the word,” said college freshman Isha Raval, who held a bone-marrow drive through the Indian Student Association at her college, the University of Connecticut.
In recent weeks, there have been countless blog posts and tweets about Gupta, a web entrepreneur who now has about 15,000 followers on Twitter.
Across the United States, Gupta's supporters have organized donor drives — the Brown Bones Benefit Party in New York City last Friday kicked off the nation-wide effort. A donor drive is even scheduled in Australia. The procedure is as simple as having your cheek swabbed with a free kit.
The outpouring of support, worldwide, has been awe-inspiring.
“I'm totally blown away,” said Gupta, whose website amitguptaneedsyou.com offers tips on how to help. “I thought my friends would tweet about it, but I didn't think total strangers would tweet about it.
“I'm so grateful,” he told the Toronto Star, from his parents home in Connecticut. “I was glad for the attention but I didn't think it would last. I don't know what to say. I don't understand what's happening.”
The tremendous support has bolstered Gupta's spirits.
“The first week was definitely the hardest . . . It didn't seem real when I thought about how much my life is going to change, that it might be over in six months or that I might not ever have kids.
“I cried more in that week than I had in my entire life. I was at a pretty low point.
“If nothing else, all of this really lifted my spirits, just knowing there are so many people out there wanting to help and do good. I know we might not find a match for me but all these people are trying and just knowing that makes things easier. And even if we don't (find a match for me) we'll find matches for a bunch of other people.”
From the cheery design of his website to organizing “swab parties” (one in Brooklyn was held in tandem with a Wu Tang Clan concert), perhaps the most amazing thing about Gupta is the fun he brings to the effort to save his own life. Though he has solicited hundreds of volunteers to get tested, the deadline approaches and he has only found a few possible matches. “But it’s nice to know things are moving!,” he said.
Gupta, who is undergoing chemotherapy, is slated to have a bone marrow transplant in January. Because of the length of time it takes to process the test kits and get potential donors registered in the database, the next six weeks of drives are crucial to finding a match. Finding a donor is a painstaking process because successful marrow transplants rely on matching 10 different genetic markers, which means matches are typically found within the same ethnic group.
That's why Gupta is turning his attention to India, where there are a few private registries but no centralized national registry, he says. There's been expressed interest in his case, but each test kit, and the accompanying DNA test, costs about $50. In India, that's “an astronomical sum,” he says, adding his friends have committed $20,000 to pay for the testing.
In Canada, minorities are under-represented in the stem cell and bone marrow registry. There are 307,000 people registered, 77 per cent are caucasian and just 3.2 per cent are South Asian.
It's crucial to diversify the donor registry so that it "represents the changing face of Canada," says Olga Pazukha of OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network, which finds and matches volunteer donors to patients who require stem cell transplants. Stem cells are found in the bone marrow and in circulating blood. Donors may be asked to donate either bone marrow or blood stem cells depending on which is best for the patient. Currently, there are 959 Canadians awaiting stem cell transplants, 33 of whom are South Asian.
“We want to engage more young people, and ethnically diverse people into the conversation and make sure they're familiar with how easy it is to join the registry.”
“Its important for the donors to understand that if they are matched to any other patient it can be a life-saving donation, so they should be prepared to donate to any patient in need anywhere around the world.”
OneMatch is part of an international network of registries, enabling physicians worldwide to search the Canadian registry. Gupta’s efforts have registered hundreds of volunteers who might not have done so otherwise. As he approaches the deadline, though, his own need for a bone-marrow donor is glaring.
Gupta’s friends have manned the ongoing search when his treatment has left him feeling ill. Friend and personal assistant Jessa Clark explained that they are now narrowing the possible donor list to those who fit six of the 10 most important criteria. The pressure is on, but the Gupta camp remains upbeat.
“We are hopeful,” Clark said.
(Reprinted courtesy of Healthzone.ca and Caitlin Dickson of The Daily Beast)
