SAN ANTONIO – A man who graduated from Fox Technical High School in 1966, Joe Alcantra, was planning on retiring from his job in Houston and returning to his hometown in San Antonio where he and his wife still own a home.
But as his daughter, Andrea Shurbaji, explained, "He went to work on a Monday. Tuesday he's in the emergency room.”
The family discovered their patriarch had an aggressive form of leukemia. So doctors immediately set him on a course of chemotherapy treatments. Shurbaji, who also lives in Houston, said it was a shock.
"So, you're always praying for everyone else and then all of the sudden you realize you're needing to pray for your family and my dear dad," she said.
Alcantra has his fourth chemotherapy session scheduled for Monday. Stem cell replacement therapy will follow. But in order for that to happen, Alcantra will need a Latino donor.
Jon Hudson is a spokesman for GenCure, which is housed at the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center. Hudson's job is to engage with the community and do things such as round up donors when they are in short supply.
His work helps people just like Alcantra. Hudson said his organization labors to find that needle in a haystack donor and hopefully get the chance to match marrow and live.
"Only 10 percent of the registry in the United States are Latino," Hudson said.
One of the primary issues is that donors are afraid of things that aren't necessarily true, Hudson said, such as having a huge needle stuck in their back.
"There's a lot of myths and misconceptions about marrow donations and stem cell donation. About 75 percent of all the donations nowadays are done through the blood stream," he explained.
Hudson said the other 25 percent is more challenging. Those donations are taken from the pelvic bone while a patient is under anesthesia. Though sore after the procedure, Hudson said, "It's more like the day after doing squats at the gym or what you feel like after a P-90X workout."
Hudson said without a Latino donor there is a chance that Alcantra -- and other Latinos like him in need of Latino blood stem cells and marrow matches -- could possibly not make it.
For more information or to register for blood stem cell or marrow donations please click here .