Gaurav – At CMC Vellore 07-Jan-09

Here is a quick update on Gaurav’s treatment. He’s due to undergo his 3rd chemo at Hinduja on Monday, 12th Jan for 3-4 days. This is high dose consolidation treatment to keep him in the state of remission.

Before this, after getting discharged from hospital on 3rd January, he was able to go to Vellore and meet Dr Mammen Chandy at CMC hospital on 6th & 7th of January. This was made possible with great help from some of you.

According to Dr Chandy also, he needs to go for MUD BMT (Matched Unrelated Donor Bone Marrow Transplant). They have taken his DNA samples and sent to USA for high resolution matching thro NMDP et al. The preliminary results will be out in 3 weeks.

So the next crucial step is to find a suitable 10/10 match donor for him.

Once we’ve found the donor he must immediately proceed for the said MUD operation. Since there is a long queue at CMC Vellore, we are evaluating other hospitals/doctors for the operation (Singapore, Israel, etc since in India only CMC Vellore does MUD BMT).

We have got estimates for treatment from Dr. Patrick Tan at Mt. Elizabeth Hospital, Singapore. The total estimate is roughly around SG$ 450,000 which roughly comes to around Rs. 1.5Cr (US$ 333,000).

Those in the USA, can also help here by actively conducting / facilitating Bone Marrow donor drives with help of SAMAR.org, et al.

Finally, we’d like to thank you sincerely for your contribution. We’ve collected close to INR 16L (Approx US$ 35,000) till date.

Please continue to spread the word to the prospective buyers for his flat & car.