for the love of lauren.

i am working on a story right now for park cities people about a little girl named lauren newman.

lauren is in 5th grade at mccullough intermediate school here highland park. she has had leukemia since she was three years old. she's gone into remission twice and is now battling her third bout of the disease. she's been through chemotherapy twice, but her doctors say that will not work this time. her only hope is a bone marrow transplant. there are 6 million people on the bone marrow registry in the united states and none of them are a match for lauren. none of her family members are matches. lauren's doctor is pushing for an early june transplant so they are desperate to find a match.

the newman family is underwriting the cost of eight or nine bone marrow drives around the country to not only help lauren find a match, but also to add a few more thousand people to the registry so other people who need transplants have hope.

on sunday from noon to 5 p.m. there will be a marrow drive at hyer elementary at 3920 caruth blvd.

if you can, try to make it out. it's just a prick in your finger that is sent to the lab to test if you are a match for lauren. your name is then added to the registry, and you could help any number of people looking for donors from around the country. you can also make tax-deductible contributions to the lauren newman fund to help the family with the costs of the drives they are underwriting.

checks marked with the "lauren newman fund" can be sent to:

the marrow foundation
lauren newman fund
400 seventh street, nw, suite 206
washington, d.c. 20004

i am not even able to meet lauren for this story because she's so sick and in the hospital - she's not allowed to have visitors.

check out park cities people this thursday for more information about lauren and some of the great stuff her friends and other members of the community are doing to help out.

update: 4:07 p.m. tuesday
lacy, lauren's dad, said i can go meet her! i am going to try to go later this week so i can take her some copies of the story. but, one of her rules is "no sad faces talking about cancer" when people go to visit. what a great little girl...