Mary Reiser

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
Many of you know mom was diagnosed with MDS in June of 2015. Regular treatments and transfusions seemed to work for the first year,  but soon we would learn her disease would continue to progress into Leukemia if something wasn't done quickly.
In September, 2016 mom visited Memorial Sloan Kettering in NYC and met Doctor Hugo Castro-Malaspina. He informed mom that a bone marrow transplant was her only option if she wanted to fight this disease.
MSK is one of the top transplant hospitals in the USA. They do hundreds of transplants a year and have an amazing facility and team. We decided this was where she needed to be to get the best care and the best results. They found her a perfect match with in weeks of starting the search. We knew this had to be a good sign.
Getting ready for the transplant was not just a matter of setting up a date with the donor and scheduling a flight out to NYC again. She had to undergo several more rounds of treatment before her body would be ready for the transplant. Many of you know Thanksgiving into the New Year was very rough for our family. Mom was in and out of the hospital with many different infections and complications. We got the clear to head back to MSK in early January for another biopsy to see if the treatment had worked. We found out it did exactly what the doctors had hoped.
We officially moved mom out to New York on January 11 and got her settled in the hospital January 19th. It has been four brutal days for her of chemo and getting her system ready for the big day. Tomorrow, January 25th is that day.
I'm sure all of you know that mom lost her daughter, my sister, on January 25th, 2003. When we found out this would be "day zero". The start of the transplant, we knew that was a sign too. One of the worst days of our lives would find a new meaning to us. We wont be able to contact the donor for a year, but we do know she is a female . Mom has named her Becky.
We will keep all of you updated from here on out through this site.  Mom will be out in NYC for the next 100+ days. One of us will always be there with her. We appreciate all of your prayers, support and positive vibes through this very difficult time. If anyone would like moms address, just get in touch with one of us kids. She can receive mail at the hospital.