[cgk]

Praying for this little girl, her twin brother and her family.

Maria Kent hugs her daughter Hailey Joy Kent in their Simi Valley home. Hailey Joy may need bone marrow for a transplant.

Eight-month-old Hailey Joy Kent smiles as her mother, Maria Kent, kisses her. Hailey Joy has leukemia and her family is looking for blood and bone marrow donors for her. She is undergoing chemotherapy.

Hailey Joy Kent, 11 months old, is scheduled to receive a cord-blood stem cell transplant for treatment of her leukemia.

13-month old Hailey Joy Kent underwent a transplant in May in an effort to fight leukemia.

[hocndoc]

Beautiful baby. Our grand daughter - and her mother - went through an umbilical cord blood stem cell transplant in Dec. 2001, for "Kostmann's syndrome," an inability to make white blood cells, then platelets and then any blood cells at all. She was sort of like the "bubble boy," and immune compromised, with a blood clotting problem thrown in. She was 15 months old, then, and had had 2 shots a day (neupogen and epogen to stimulate white blood cells and and at least one bone marrow biopsy each month since she was about a month old.

Here she is on the 4th of July, with our Congressman, Lamar Smith. She will be 7 next month and doesn't have to take any medicines at all. She has healed a broken pinkie finger with those bone marrow cells and is healthier than my kids were, with fewer ear infections. She has always been the sweetest tempered human being I've ever known, except for very occasional and very short-lived burst of the "other Roni."

I have hopes that in 6 years we'll see similar pictures of Hailey Joy.