28-year old Nick Glasgow of Pleasanton, CA is in a race for his life. Like Project Michelle and 1,000 Cranes for Hope with Yul Kwon, Nick is looking for a bone marrow transplant. When his doctor found out that he was a quarter Japanese, he said there is a zero percent chance of finding a donor. According to the Asian-American Donor Program, based in Alameda, there are 7.4 million registered donors in the U.S. Only 532,000 are of Asian descent. That’s 7.2 percent of the total. Only 219,000 donors are of multiple races.

Just like Project Michelle, Nick’s family and friends are determined to beat the odds. They have launched an urgent social networking campaign on Facebook and Twitter. Blogs about Nick’s predicament have reached thousands of people.

For more information about how you can help see below.


Bone Marrow Donor Needed for Nick Glasgow

Nick Glasgow, a 28-year-old EMC employee in California who, in the span of just weeks, has been diagnosed with Leukemia and now is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. Over the weekend, the compassion of the EMC family was abundant as hundreds of EMCers responded to this plea — either by getting tested as potential donors, passing the information along to friends and family members, or just offering their prayers, personal experiences, and asking what they could do. When word reached Cisco, a company larger than EMC that has been a strong partner in the marketplace for years, Cisco people also sprang into action.

Nick’s mother, Carole Wiegand, also an EMC employee, has expressed her and Nick’s deepest gratitude at the outpouring of help and support. But the race to find a qualified donor is at a critical stage, so I am sending this update with more specifics on how a potential donor can expedite a possible match. Please feel free to circulate this message beyond EMC (social media vehicles were used to rapidly spread word about Nick throughout the weekend).

Here are the essential facts:

– Any person whose ethnic background is a mix of Asian and Caucasian, and is in good health with no history of cancer or major illness, and is between the ages of 18 and 60, is a potential donor for Nick. Expanding on the initial information, one does not need to be 75% Caucasian and 25% Asian — any potential mix could work. While the most likely match would be from a person who is 75% Caucasian and 25% Japanese, it is absolutely possible that other combinations of Caucasian-Asian background in different proportions could work. The Asian background should be Sino-Asian, rather than Indo-Asian. Finding an ideal match with all of Nick’s markers is very difficult, and we do not want to exclude any potential donors.

– Go to the “Be The Match” National Marrow Donor Program at http://www.marrow.org/. Rather than ordering a test kit (time is too critical for that), read the facts about donating and then you can register yourself and enter your zip code at http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/Join_in_Person/index.html to find drives in your area in the next few days. If there is not a local drive in your area within the next few days, please call one of the labs listed and request a time to drop in for urgent testing. (These instructions apply to people in the US. Other countries have similar programs.) People who join the registry can help any person, not just Nick.

– The test is a simple cheek swab. The actual donation can be a blood draw or a more complex procedure, which would have some side-affects from which people bounce back quickly. This link has facts about the procedural aspects of bone marrow donation:
http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/Myths_%26_Facts_about_Marrow_Don/index.html. If a qualified donor is identified and medical or travel costs are an issue, this will be taken care of.

– Special drives for Nick are also being arranged for the next few days. We are looking at possible locations where a drive could facilitate good numbers of potential donors (San Francisco/San Jose area, the Boston/Hopkinton area, and Orlando, where EMC World is taking place this week). Carol Gillespie at the Asian American Donor Program (AADP) is providing testing if you are located in the Bay Area in California (all ethnic minorities and Caucasians wishing to join will be asked to pay a portion of their testing costs, $25). Please contact AADP directly at 1-800-593-6667 and speak to anyone on the staff if you are local, to have your testing done more quickly .

– If you get tested, it is important that you expedite the process by sending an email to all three people in the cc line on this message:
Carole Wiegand (wiegand_carole@emc.com), Nick’s mom and fellow EMC employee

Stacy Morales (morales_stacy@emc.com), a friend and EMC colleague of Nick and Carole who is helping to coordinate all this

Carol Gillespie (carol@aadp.org) at the Asian American Donor Program

In the email, include your registration ID number, the location where you were tested, and testing date. The reason for this is that the national database usually takes a few weeks to be updated with a new potential donor’s test results. For Nick, time is of the essence. They will be expediting these samples for Nick so his doctors will be able to urgently retrieve possible matches.

Thank you to all who have tried to help and expressed concern. I would like to close with this message from Stacy Morales:

“Thank you does not begin to express the gratitude that Carole and Nick have for you all right now. You have given this family hope, and quite possibly, the gift of life.”