Woman battling cancer turns to Facebook in global search for life-saving donor
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A woman in Australia fighting an aggressive form of cancer who does not match with any registered bone marrow donor in the world has turned to Facebook in search of a match to save her life.
Pamela Bou Sejean, 26, of Belmont, in the southern state of Victoria, is fighting for her life after 16 months battling Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
She has created an appeal on Facebook in a last ditch bid to find the stem cell donor to keep her alive and is now pleading for the public to come forward to be blood tested for a possible match.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I don't know how much time I have, I get too afraid to ask," Bou Sejean said. "I want to focus on what we're doing now. The waiting process is hard."
With her life in the balance, Bou Sejean's brother Matt set up the Facebook page How You Can Help Cure Pamela a week ago. There, Facebook users are told how to be blood tested for a possible stem cell match.
Matt Bou Sejean who, like the rest of the family, does not match with his sister said, "The cure for Pamela is in the body of hundreds of people out there."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Anyone could be a match for Bou Sejean but people from a Lebanese background like her are more likely to be stem cell matches. Lebanon does not have a bone marrow registry.
"It's been a pretty crazy time, everything changes," Bou Sejean said. "Sometimes I stop and think I can't believe this is happening to me.
"I'd just like get back to doing normal things again, you take it for granted until it's taken away from you. You wish you had those small problems again.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"You feel like your whole life is cancer and you get reminded of it all the time. To hear the words 'they've found a match' would give me a lot more hope to face everything."