CAMDEN — Pen Bay Medical Center Emergency Department doctor Tracy Jalbuena is reaching out to the community, both in Midcoast Maine, and beyond in the world, in her search for a bone marrow match. She has sent word through the national bone marrow organizations, and, more specifically, to her an aspect of her own heritage, the Filipino Pinoy community. In the course of that search, Jalbeuna has found herself a poster child for all Asian Americans, and, all Asian Americans with mixed blood. 

Jalbuena has Primary Amyloidosis and Multiple Myeloma. The overall cure for these diseases is a bone marrow transplant.  But Jalbuena’s blood is unique. Her mother comes from a lineage of Irish and German descent.  Her father’s blood is a mixture of Filipino, Chinese, and Spanish. 

“Who would have thought that my daughter’s beautifully blended heritage would someday limit her very life?” Kathy Jalbuena wrote on the family’s blog, Be the Match for Dr. Tracy Jalbuena.

Jalbuena’s father was diagnosed with a condition called AL Amyloidosis, a disfunction of the plasma cells, in 2011. Medical professionals do not consider AL Amyloidosis to be an inheritable disease. But Multiple Myeloma is. In 2012, Jalbuena was diagnosed with the same thing. For most people with Multiple Myeloma, treatment is found in an autologous stem cell transplant. Jalbuena’s didn’t work. That’s when the search for bone marrow began. 

Jalbuena put out a short YouTube video, directed toward the Pinoy community; to her relatives and their friends in the Philippines.  The message is simple: Donate bone marrow. Sometimes simplicity is the best course of action. 

The video has since been shared on Facebook, and other people have picked up the cause that her mother started in a letter-writing campaign to such professional organizations as Philippino-American Anaesthesiologists, college associations and student groups, alumni associations, and regional associations.  

“She probably sent out a 100 or more emails with this information, and asking them to encourage their members to register,” said Jalbuena.

The Chillicothe Gazette ran a story on Jalbuena on January 20.

Since Jalbuena’s diagnosis, bone marrow drives have been organized.  There was one in Chicago. Others are planned in Columbus, Ohio, where Jalbuena went through residency; Chapel Hill, N.C., where she went to medical school; and San Francisco and Honolulu are in the planning stages..

Initially, Jalbuena was a part of that energetic campaign, but can no longer continue. 

Since the video posting, Jalbuena has become sicker. Tumors were found, and chemotherapy has become an indefinite part of her routine. If a bone marrow match was found today, she wouldn’t be able to take it.  Tumors and chemotherapy and transplants don’t work together. 

“Hopefully, whenever a donor materializes, I will be remission,” she said, Jan 21, sitting at her kitchen table in her Camden home, just after she returned from her regular chemo therapy at Pen Bay Medical Center. “But the stars have to align in order for the marrow transplant to happen.”

Chillicothe, Ohio, is Jalbuena’s hometown.  Her father practiced medicine there for 40 years.  Jalbuena said that as a child, she’d ask for an item at a concession stand.  The person she’d ask would turn around and yell to the other sellers, “The Jalbuena kid wants a...” A town of 25,000 is big enough not to know everyone.  But for a child whose father treated the community for four decades, the family becomes recognizable.

And when father was a doctor, mother was a nurse, and both grandparents were doctors, the call to medicine eventually happens. 

Jalbuena’s realization came during her second year majoring in sociology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Being a sociology professor just isn’t in Jalbuena’s genes.  Instead, she went on to med school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, set upon being a family practitioner, until her emergency room rotation captured her interest. 

Following her husband’s desire to move to Maine, Jalbuena started work at Pen Bay Medical Center in 2009.  Now, she is not only doctor, but patient.

“I know what the indelible little, bad, indications are when a doctor orders a test,” she said. “Why are you ordering that test? The only reason to order that test is blah blah blah, and that’s not good.”

As a patient, Jalbuena has “a new appreciation for the stress” of chronic disease.

“It’s a grinding, constant stress that wears you down. It makes you less resilient. It reduces your capacity to cope with the little bumps in the road.”

The process of being a bone marrow donor is complicated, but not as painful as it used to be.  For most donors, drilling of the hip bone is no longer required, according to Jalbuena.  Instead, intravenous lines (IVs) remove donor blood, separate the stem cells and return the rest of the blood to the donor.

Before this step potential donors register on Bethematch.org. They fill out a health questionnaire.  A cheek swab is then sent to them in the mail. Because bone marrow tires, patient success is more likely if the donor is younger than 45. Therefore, the $100 registration fee is waived for that age group.

If chosen as a donor, medical expenses, travel and hotels are covered by the recipient’s insurance, or bethematch.org, according to Jalbuena.

Only 1 in 40 get a call back after registering to help. Only 1 in 500 actually donate. 

A representative will be on hand at the Red Cross blood drive at Pen Bay Medical Center Thursday, Jan. 29, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.  The drive takes place in the Physicians Building conference rooms, Glen Cove Drive, Rockport. Bone marrow donations cannot be given at that time. 

Read Tracy Jalbuena’s blog: marrowme.wordpress.com. 

Reach Sarah Thompson at news@penbaypilot.com