Mother of three, pregnant with twins, desperately needs bone marrow transplant to fight leukemia

Nov. 16--She laughed just a little as she unveiled the nightmare that has snared her.

"I might come back blonder," Susie Rabaca said, a knit cap covering her bald head. "We'll see. I try to live as happy as I can."

The rest of the time she told her story, she was in tears. Happy does not find its way into her life much these days.

Eight months pregnant -- with twins -- Rabaca, 36, and the mother of three other children, has been told by doctors that her life and the lives of the babies she is carrying are in danger. Two months into her pregnancy, she found that she has acute myeloid leukemia, the most aggressive form of the leukemia diseases.

She needs a bone marrow transplant, and she needs it fast.

The babies are due Dec. 6. And doctors would like to perform a bone marrow transplant on Susie as soon after the birth as possible.

"It means life to me," Rabaca said of finding a donor. "It means a future. I want to be able to raise my kids, all of them."

Rabaca has teamed up with Be The Match, an advocacy group for bone marrow donations. Be The Match collects swabs from the inside of potential donors' cheeks and tests for DNA traits that align with Rabaca.

The odds they've given her aren't encouraging. Rabaca is half Latina and half Caucasian, and her donor would have to share most of her DNA traits. So far, only one of her family members is even close to matching with five of the 10 traits necessary for the most effective match.

Doctors don't want Rabaca to go into transplant surgery with a 5-in-10 donor.

So she waits for a miracle.

Taken by surprise

The nightmare started on such a strange and happy note.

Susie Rabaca, raised in San Pedro, has been a cake decorator at Albertsons for the past 18 years. Her sister Tiffany works in the Albertsons produce department. In May, Tiffany was trying to get pregnant, so one day at the store, she decided to take a pregnancy test.

On a break, Rabaca said she would also take a pregnancy test just to support her sister and have a laugh.

Rabaca's test turned up positive. She fell on the floor in shock, laughing.

"I was jealous," said Tiffany, who was not pregnant.

Salvator Russo, Rabaca's husband, was equally surprised when Rabaca sent him a picture of the positive pregnancy test.

"I was overwhelmed," Sal said.

Eight months ago, her life was good. She was the mother of three -- Jade, 14, Edgar, 13 and Rylee, 4. Getting pregnant was a happy accident.

The next surprise came at the hospital when Rabaca went to the emergency room because she was experiencing some bleeding.

"The nurse said, 'The babies are OK,'" Rabaca said. Babies? Plural? She didn't know she was pregnant with twins. Suddenly, she faced the prospect of being the mother of five.

The twins are a boy and a girl. Their names will be Ryan and Rainey, and the girl's middle name will be Hope.

When she started to get exhausted at work, she went back to the doctor, where it was discovered her hemoglobin numbers were too low. Then the doctors came with the devastating news. She had leukemia.

"I freaked out," she said.

The first course of action was a series of blood transfusions. Then, the options turned grim. Abortion? Chemotherapy? If she decided to do nothing, she could die.

"They asked me if I want to terminate the pregnancy," she said. "I couldn't do that. I could not have an abortion."

She chose chemo to save her own life.

"It was so stressful," Sal said. "I was nervous. It has been scary."

She has endured two rounds of chemotherapy. Her hair fell out. She developed a rash on her face, sores in her mouth and spiking fevers.

Searching for a donor

Her family made posters and they're hanging them in local restaurants to ask people to sign up to donate their bone marrow.

"Unfortunately, people don't know about donation until it impacts their family," said Al Gomez, a community outreach specialist for City of Hope.

In Rabaca's family, her mother Yvette Bielma has taken the lead.

"Every single day, I'm going on websites, and I'm putting fliers out there," said Yvette, who works as a medical assistant at Providence Little Company of Mary Hospital. "So many people have kind hearts. They'll listen to me and hug me. But I need them to log onto Be The Match."

Her goal is to find a match in the next three weeks before the babies come.

So far, the process has been frustrating. Early on, a perfect match (10-for-10 DNA traits) was found. But that person was deleted off the registry and is not available. It could have been that they only signed up to help a single person, or that they changed their mind.

"I was devastated," Rabaca said. "But what can we do? We keep moving forward."

According to BeTheMatch.org registry statistics, 70 percent of blood disease patients do not have a fully matched donor in their family. Finding a successful match has proven difficult for a person like Susie Rabaca. Depending on a person's DNA makeup, successful matches are found between 23 and 75 percent of the time.

Her mixed-race profile puts her on the low end of those odds.

In the meantime, she draws strength from her kids, especially her youngest, Rylee.

"She rubs my head," Rabaca said.

For good luck, she hopes.

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