Emru Townsend, founder and editor of fps, has been suffering from leukemia and monosomy 7. His family, especially sister Tamu, have been campaigning to raise awareness of bone marrow registration. If somebody needs a bone marrow transplant and no members of their immediate family are a match, the next step is to search databases worldwide, hoping to find someone, somewhere, who can provide a match. The Townsend family has worked hard not only to locate someone for Emru but also to increase the size of the database so that others in need have a better chance of finding a match.
The reason this is a good photograph is that Emru had his bone marrow transplant on September 16. He is posing here with the donor stem cells. I certainly hope that the transplant does its job and starts Emru on the road to recovery. He's a longtime booster of animation in its many forms and the sooner he can resume his normal life, the better for us all.
If you're interested in details of Emru's story or how you can add yourself to the bone marrow registry, the best place to go is here, where Emru and family have documented his experiences.
Thanks for the photo, Mark. It was great meeting up with Tamu in Ottawa and hearing about the procedure Emru has finally been able to undergo. I feel confident it'll be a success; he's too great a guy for anything else.
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome news. I concur with Michael and feel that only good will come from this.
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