Jonathan and I are back in Baltimore this Labor Day, celebrating the official end of summer with a bang: the start of Jonathan’s next  — and hopefully last — round of chemo here at Hopkins. Hard to believe that it’s 6 months to the day since Jonathan started on this crazy chemo battle.

As Jonathan’s last post mentioned, despite the amazing turnout and support for our donor drives throughout July and August, a fully matched donor for Jonathan has not been found. His medical team searched for both bone marrow and cord blood donors to no avail. So, without a perfect bone marrow match or a suitable cord blood donor, Jonathan’s next step is another round chemo — a regimen called FLAM — followed by the mini-haplo transplant Jonathan described the other day, an experimental bone marrow transplant using stem cells from a half-matched donor, later this fall.

But we don’t want you to feel as if the drives were anything less than a success. Team Haupt hosted more than 30 bone marrow donor drives in a month and a half coast to coast.  Our efforts helped to add more than 2,500 potential donors to the national registries. The impact didn’t stop there: hundreds more took part in our “virtual drive,” registering for swab test kits online and participating by mail, and we raised tens of thousands of dollars in donations for our wonderful non-profit partners, DKMS Americas & Gift of Life.

Beyond that, we just got word from our friends at DKMS that someone who registered at our DC drive may be a donor match for another blood cancer patient in need.  We are thrilled to think that our efforts may already be helping another family out there.

Jonathan remains optimistic and energized, and Team Haupt stands stronger than ever in our commitment to finding for a cure for leukemia and helping other patients find their match. We can’t thank all of you enough for your support and encouragement these past 6 months.  Hope you’ll keep it coming for the next 6 as well!