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Friday June 14, 2002

Area bone marrow donor could save emigre's life

ABBY COHN
Bulletin Correspondent

Somewhere in the Bay Area, a Jewish resident of Russian or Eastern European descent might have the ability to save Nella Kozlova's life.

Relatives of the 53-year-old Ukrainian emigre say they need to find such a person soon.

Kozlova, the mother of a 23-year-old daughter and 2-year-old twins, was diagnosed last fall with multiple myeloma, or cancer of the bone marrow. Her hopes for survival rest with finding a donor for a bone marrow transplant.

"ASAP, that's what they keep saying," said her grown daughter, Dina Kozlova.

On Wednesday, family and friends of Kozlova, a mechanical engineer who lives in Redwood City, hope to recruit as many potential donors as possible at a special blood drive in San Francisco sponsored by Jewish Family and Children's Services.

The blood screening is free, and participants may choose to be tested specifically for Kozlova or for the national donor program as well.

"People have a unique opportunity to actually save someone's life," said Gayle Zahler, assistant executive director of JFCS. "It's not often that they have that opportunity."

JFCS is publicizing the event with mailings to clients, advertisements in local newspapers and fliers handed out at the recent "Israel in the Gardens" festival. "A lot of Russian emigres have come in the past to that event," explained Zahler, whose organization is also underwriting the $73 cost of blood typing.

Dina Kozlova describes her family's situation as "a nightmare." Her mother, who has been undergoing regular treatments of chemotherapy since her diagnosis, was admitted to Stanford Hospital last week with a high fever.

"She is very ill right now," said Dr. Beth Martin, the Stanford hematologist caring for Kozlova.

Finding a suitable donor involves locating someone with the same human leucocytic antigens as Kozlova. The most likely applicants are either relatives or people with a similar ethnic background, said Susan Flemer, coordinator of the National Marrow Donor Program at San Francisco's Blood Centers of the Pacific.

"Because ethnicity does play a part, they believe people of a Jewish background [are] probably where a match will come from," Flemer said.

So far, none of her relatives or friends has proven to be a match. "All the relatives we could get a hold of all over the world have been screened," said Dina Kozlova, who estimates that about 50 friends and relatives have been tested so far. "We don't have a big family. We didn't know how hard that would be."

The efforts on Kozlova's behalf have included ads placed in Israeli newspapers. Locally, JFCS got involved after Dina Kozlova mentioned her mother's illness to a staff member at Club Noon, a drama program she attends for young ex-Soviet emigres.

"We've made a lot of direct contact with people in the community," said Zahler, who estimated that up to 40,000 ex-Soviets live in the Bay Area. "I hope there's a really good turnout."

So does Dina Kozlova. But she also worries about the emigre community's deep-seated suspicion of medical treatment. "In Russia, you would avoid hospitals at any cost," says Kozlova, who moved to the Bay Area with her mother and grandparents in 1991.

To help allay any fears about the safety of the procedure, the donor identification drive will include the presentation of an 11-minute informational video. Staff members from the Blood Centers of the Pacific and from Orchid Diagnostics, the two organizations conducting the drive, also will hold a question and answer session.

Potential donors then can have a simple blood test. If a match is found, donors would undergo a medical exam and give blood in an outpatient procedure. Stem cells extracted from their blood then would be transfused into Kozlova, where the cells hopefully would replace those in her diseased immune system.

"It's really the best treatment we have available," said Martin. Observing that "we still have lots of options," she noted that chemotherapy will progressively weaken her patient's system and ability to fight off illness.

Martin described Kozlova as a "very buoyant person" who was coping well emotionally with her illness.

"She's a really busy mother of twin 2-1/2-year-olds. She's got a lot at stake right now."

Dina Kozlova said her mother was laid off last summer from an engineering job in Milpitas and had started applying for new positions when she became ill. "She's been in bed most of the time and when she's not in bed, she's in the hospital getting treatment."

Since her mother's illness, Dina Kozlova has stopped attending De Anza College to help with her mother's care while friends are helping to watch her two half-siblings, Michelle Salome and Charles Saleh Loya.

"We have two kids. I need her," said Ed Loya, co-owner of a ceramic tile business in San Carlos, who met Kozlova in 1995 through an ad in the Jewish Bulletin. "Without her, I'm really helpless. She's a great mom, a great woman."

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