Lisa Gershowitz Flynn, a Downtown mother battling with leukemia, found a bone-marrow donor on March 5, said Katharina Harf, executive vice president of D.K.M.S., a bone marrow donor center based in Germany.
The donor is 32 and female, Harf said, but for security reasons her identity cannot be revealed; however, if Flynn wanted to meet her, she would have to wait one year after the operation.
“[T]he English language does not have words that are adequate,” Flynn said on her Web site giftforlisa.com, “to thank someone for working to save your life.” Downtown Express wrote about her search for a donor two weeks ago.
The bone-marrow donor was found three months after Flynn was first diagnosed with acute myelogeneous leukemia one day after Thanksgiving. Two chemotherapies were unsuccessful and Flynn had to rely on a marrow donor of Ashkenazi or Eastern European Jewish decent.
Actress Kate Winslet, and most recently, 20-year-old singer Rihanna campaigned to find a donor for Flynn, 41, and over 5,000 people registered with D.K.M.S.
The National Cancer Institute estimates 44, 270 new cases of leukemia in 2008, as well as 21,710 deaths caused by the blood cancer.
