Below, Krissy Kobata shares how City of Hope supported her throughout her battle with myelodysplastic syndrome.<\/em><\/p>\n Krissy Kobata knows what it is like to wait.<\/p>\n For more than 10 years, she waited for a bone marrow donor while inside her body simmered a blood disease called myelodysplastic syndrome<\/a>.<\/p>\n As Kobata grappled with her condition, she saw friends and acquaintances in similar situations \u2013 people whose mixed heritage was a barrier to transplant \u2013 do the same. Sometimes in vain.<\/p>\n \u201cEmotionally, I am a ticking time bomb,\u201d said Kobata, whose father is Japanese and mother is Caucasian, in an interview with Glamour<\/em><\/a> in 2012. \u201cWithout a transplant, this disease will eventually kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, Kobata\u2019s care team at City of Hope, which had been monitoring her condition, said she could not wait any longer. She needed a match right away.<\/p>\n \u201cI was getting sicker and sicker,\u201d said Kobata, 35. \u201cAnd by that time, I was really scared.\u201d<\/p>\n For minorities and mixed-race patients diagnosed with life-threatening blood cancers, bone marrow transplants (BMT<\/a>) offer a second chance and may be their best hope for a cure. But these patients face an added layer of difficulty when seeking bone marrow matches either within their extended family or from an unrelated donor on the Be The Match<\/a> registry.<\/p>\n Only 4% of donors on the registry are of mixed-race background.<\/p>\n \u201cBone marrow matches get more complicated the more racially mixed we are and makes things much more difficult for patients,\u201d says Jill Kendall-Erb, program director for the Be the Match program at City of Hope<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s a very big deal because it means you have a donor base that is huge and vast and wide for Caucasian patients, but not for minority patients.\u201d<\/p>\n The best matches tend to come from immediate family members. A patient has about a 25% chance of matching a sibling. But even in large families, there is no guarantee.<\/p>\n To continue reading about Kobata’s journey, head over to fff.me\/kobata<\/a>.<\/p>\n xx, The FabFitFun Team<\/p>\n For more inspiring stories, read about\u00a0Stacy Kimmel<\/a>, a five-time cancer survivor, and\u00a0Donna Mcnutt<\/a>‘s testimonial on life after<\/em> cancer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":"FALL 2019 BOX PARTNER Here at FabFitFun, we partner with a new charity every season ...","author":272854,"featured_media":143663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[201],"tags":[533],"thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/static.fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/19124122\/krissy-kobata-hand-on-hip.jpg","thumbnail_url_middle_card":"https:\/\/static.fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/19124122\/krissy-kobata-hand-on-hip-386x200.jpg","formated_date":"August 12, 2019","category_name":"Members Only","category_icon":"https:\/\/static.fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/11113301\/iSiu0EDM.png","author_name":"","trending":false,"sponsored":false,"random_color":"#8e15c1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143662"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272854"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/krissy-kobata-in-hospital.jpg\")
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