Photo courtesy of Crystal Price. Tre Price sits poolside in June 2010.

Published on: Wednesday, August 18, 2010

By Maite Fernandez

Crystal Price has been practically living in the East Tower room at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She rarely goes back to her home in Waldorf and often sleeps on the couch or the chair next to her son’s bed.

Woodrow Bernard Price Jr., or “Tre”, as they call him, is curled up in his bed, a blanket covering him up to his head. He uncovers his face for a few seconds to say hi. He looks tired and sleepy.

Tre has been diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia since February 2008, when he was 11 years old. He started having flu-like symptoms and began losing weight to the point “that you could see his bones,” said his mother.

Photo courtesy of Crystal Price. Tre Price visits the Redskins training camp in Virginia on July 31, 2010.

He underwent treatment and got better— until May of this year, when his knee started hurting while he was playing football. The doctors checked him and he was hospitalized again. They found the cancer had come back.

Even though leukemia has a very high cure rate when first diagnosed, Crystal said it’s harder to fight it now because it came back before the three-year treatment was completed.

Since Tre has been hospitalized two weeks ago, she has been sitting by his side and checked every aspect of his treatment. Crystal, 37, has Multiple Sclerosis and is disabled. She talks to the doctors, to the nurses and checks the medication they give him. She has stayed with him when Tre had pain crisis, episodes in which he felt excruciating pain caused by the delayed reaction of two medications.

The doctors said that Tre needs a bone marrow transplant, and his mom is reaching out to find a donor. Tre’s dad, Woodrow “Woody” Price, a Prince George’s County volunteer firefighter and a career firefighter in the district, has also reached out to his comrades for help.

The problem is that is hard to find a match.

Tre is African American, and as a racial minority, it is difficult to find a compatible donor.

“We have such a broad background of different nationalities in our race that is hard to find a match,” Crystal said.

Joan Keller, director of the American Bone Marrow Donor Registry, said that there are 13 million people registered worldwide and that the average population has a chance of 1 in 20,000 to find a donor, while other heritages have 1 in 1 million or 1 in 2 million.

“Within the African-American heritage, it is especially difficult because it is rare to find someone with a pure African descent. There are so many mixed with other heritages,” said Keller.

She explained that 40 to 50 percent of Caucasians find donors very quickly, within one or two months, 15 percent of Asians and Hispanics find it within that time, while only 8 to 10 percent of African Americans do so.

Crystal said that one of the main problems is that “a lot of people don’t donate because they don’t know about it. It’s a non-invasive procedure.”

Keller said that leukemia comes from the bone marrow, which can be explained in simple terms as the “factory for the production of blood.”

To find a possible match, doctors conduct a cheek swab test. Keller said a blood test was previously required, but that is no longer the case.

After a match is found, the patient’s bone marrow is destroyed by chemotherapy and/or radiation and the new bone marrow is then transplanted, in a process similar to the donation of platelets.

The donor has to undergo a surgical procedure. Doctors make small incisions through the skin over the back of the pelvic bones. Then they insert a hollow needle through these incisions over the rear of the pelvic bone to remove the marrow.

Crystal said the treatment is not invasive and not painful. Tre needs to have the transplant no later than the end of September. The family has found two donors, but none of them would be available for that time frame.

The Price family asks everyone to reach out to Be the Match, a foundation within The National Marrow Donor Program. The organization, which can be reached at www.marrow.org, organizes donor registry events and other activities related to bone marrow transplants.

And while waiting to find a match, Crystal tries to stay positive. But she also fears the worst.

She misses the comfort of her life at home and said Tre only wants his life back. He’s 14 now, and he has not completed a whole school year since sixth grade. He only wants to play football and be with his friends, like any active normal teenager, Crystal said.

“It’s unfair. He’s been robbed of his youth. He wants to be normal again,” she said.