This is one of the best updates (till now!) I am writting. We are very happy to share that – With God’s grace and all your prayers & wishes

WE HAVE FINALLY FOUND A DONOR.

This is a key milestone in this long & challenging journey. This was one thing over which we had absolutely no control; neither did we have proper visibility in the process. Fortunately, with God’s grace, things have worked out in our favor “at right time”.

Thank you all for your support, prayers and wishes.

Early in January 2009, when we started the fund raising exercise, we neither had a donor nor enough money. We were denied acceptance at CMC Vellore since they had a long waiting list (till Aug 09) and donor search had not even begun.

Hence we started working on both donor and money aspects keeping in mind any possible situation (type of donor and location of transplant center). We were aiming for the best combination where we get a 10/10 donor and we could do it in the MSKCC (New York, USA) or Fred Hutchison (Seattle, USA).

However after sometime, we realised that the USA option is not practically possible because of extremely high costs. Also the donor search seemed to be an ever-ending exercise.

In the meantime Gaurav’s chemo also got over and risk of possible relapse was looming large. So without wasting precious time, we were actively considering to go for Haplo transplant (with Gaurav’s sister as donor) in Israel. This was within financial reach (thanks to the funds we could collect finally). Also Dr Slavin’s super-stature in this area gave us a lot of comfort.

However, most recently as we got the news that we finally found a 10/10 donor. As mentioned in an earlier update, a fully matched unrelated donor is better than a half-match (haplo) one. Hence, we have now ruled out the haplo option in Israel.

Also, other good news is that Dr Mammen Chandy from CMC Vellore obliged by agreeing to do the 10/10 transplant ASAP!

We have decided to get the transplant done from Dr Chandy at CMC Vellore.

Trust me it’s one of the most difficult decisions which we ever took. We argued pros & cons endlessly, spoke to the medical experts, to transplant patients and finally tried to listen to our instincts and decided to follow the gut!

The transplant will be done tentatively around end of May. Gaurav will have to stay in Vellore for atleast 3 months.

We hope that the donor is able to donate as planned and we dont run into any unforeseen problem. We keep our fingers crossed until the stem-cells arrive in Vellore from US (the donor is in the US).

The most crucial part of the battle starts now.

Thank you for all your love, support and prayers!

Check this out – Click Here. Please scroll down to the end of the page.

PS: The cost of transplant in Vellore should be less than the amount of funds we have raised. Once Gaurav is successfully cured, he and the helpgaurav team wish to utilize the funds for a similar cause. We will appreciate your suggestions on this going forward.

For now, let us pray Gaurav has a successful transplant.