Please help support Jackie Roberts!

Our sweet friend Jackie was recently diagnosed with MD (Mylodysplasia ), and will not be able to work for a minimum of 6 months but possibly much longer. Currently she has been working with many specialists and they all agree that she needs to get a bone marrow transplant as soon as possible. Her M.D. is progressing quickly and is basically the beginning of Leukemia. If she doesn't have the bone marrow transplant it will turn into acute myeloid leukemia which is a very aggressive Leukemia. Right now, the first goal is to find a bone marrow match. There is a national registry for this, but the likelihood of finding a match in that is extremely low, one in many millions, but thankfully she has 7 siblings, 5 of which are candidates that could possibly be a match (25% chance). She is seeing the doctors at Colorado blood and Cancer Institute,which is in Presbyterian St. Luke's hospital in Denver. They are known as one of the best cancer treatment centers and people come from all over the world to get treatment there. All of the siblings that could possibly be a match and are a candidate as a donor were sent out kits for testing and the results haven't come back yet. Hopefully, one of them will be a match, and in that case they would fly out twice, the first time to do some pre testing, and the second time for the transplant. If one of them is not a match she would be put on the national bone marrow registry. Cross fingers and pray that one of them will be a match! The donation procedure is different than it used to be, it is actually now called a stem cell transplant and all that is needed is the donors blood from a peripheral blood draw. The blood is then put into a machine, similar to the way dialysis works, and it is able to separate the donor stem cells from the rest of the donor blood. Once that is done the blood will be dripped into Jackie through an IV. That is the easier part, the difficult part comes after the transplant is finished. So basically Jackie will be getting a new immune system and in order to prepare her for that they have to "dumb" down her immune system, which is not properly working. They are going to give her a new immune system with the stem cell transplant. In order to prepare her for the transplant and prevent her own body from attacking this new immune system,she is going to be getting a couple of different chemotherapies. One of the 2 chemotherapies is very strong and she will get unwanted side effects from it. She will also be on some strong immunosuppressants and stay on those for a long time after the transplant. She will be staying in the hospital for 6-10 weeks, all depending on how well she is doing , but they need to keep her there and monitor her very closely.
Right now, her immune system is not properly producing white blood cells, platelets, and red blood cells the way that is needed . Her platelet count is very low, and has been rapidly going down, so she is at risk of having severe bleeding and bruises easily, her white blood cell count is very low which leaves her at risk of getting infections. She currently has a sinus infection, an ear infection and just got over a tooth infection. Because of this they put her on prophylactic antibiotics. Her MD came on quickly and is getting worse quickly.
I went with Jackie to her doctor appointments and I was so impressed because she never once complained. When the doctor looked in her ear she asked her if she had a ruptured her eardrum and couldn't believe what a severe ear infection she had. But Jackie never complained. Her knee is swollen and very painful but I never hear her complain about that either. In fact, she was supposed to have a knee replacement a couple of months ago and that is how they found out that she has MD. When they got her preop results from her blood work they saw that her platelets and neutrophils were very low and told her they could not do the surgery and that she needed to get it checked out right away. She saw the doctor at Kaiser and they did a bone marrow biopsy. Aftet getting the results they sent her to see the doctors at Colorado blood and Cancer Institute. They want to get the bone marrow transplant done as soon as possible.
All of the medical bills will end up being thousands of dollars, and insurance will only cover 80%. Because of her condition she is at high risk for infections, and bleeding, and is very weak and uncomfortable. I am hoping we can raise money to help pay medical bills, to hire a house cleaner to come in every other week, and to cover other expenses since she won't be able to work for so long..
This is such a stressful and hard time for Jackie and her family, let's all come together and support her and her family through this and do whatever we can to help! Jackie is a single mom with two kids, Spencer is in college, and Nicki is a junior in high school. Raising money to help with the medical expenses, bringing meals, helping with cleaning, a professional housekeeper, and getting her an awesome wig, will help her so much, keep her stress level down, so all she has to worry about is getting well!
Even if it is donating your own time to help clean or stay with her when she gets out of the hospital, whatever anyone can do would be so appreciated!
It's obvious that Jackie has given her all to raising her kids because they are so amazing! After her diagnosis Spencer wrote this text to her, "Love you Mom, keep fighting, you are the best mom in the whole wide world! Your going to beat this! I believe in you and so does The Lord."
Again, let's all come together and help Jackie get through this!
There are no words to describe how much she appreciates all of you!