Hibbetts Gerardi seeks bone marrow match

SILVER LAKES - In her comfortable home of about 13 years, Dena Hibbetts Gerardi sits on a dark couch surrounded with drawings by M.C. Escher. Her mother, Shirley Hibbetts, sits beside her. Across the room, Mark Gerardi uses the computer.

It's early Saturday evening on a pleasant day in Silver Lakes, a natural time for a family to gather and remember. But the light green photo album Hibbetts Gerardi shares isn't full of pictures from kid's birthday parties or Christmas morning. The series, which Hibbetts shot at her daughter's request, depicts scene after scene of Hibbetts Gerardi receiving treatments at City of Hope in Duarte.

Though Hibbetts Gerardi didn't want the photos published in the Desert Dispatch, she keeps them organized into the photo book because, she told her mother, she never wants to forget what she's been through.

What she's been through is being diagnosed with an aggressive form Hodgkin's lymphoma. What she's been through is getting some of her own cells harvested and returned to her body and learning they weren't working. What she's been through is learning at age 45 that she needs a bone marrow transplant and discovering neither of her brothers' marrow will work.

"We were just sure in our hearts that one of the brothers would be a match," Hibbetts said.

Hibbetts Gerardi is part of a study at City of Hope that combines new medications with chemotherapy meant to destroy cancerous cells. The four tumors on the lymph nodes around her esophagus have shrunk during six weeks of the treatment, but until she's matched with a donor, she'll continue chemotherapy treatments, which make her tired and weak. Avoiding going out and being exposed to germs makes her feel like a hermit in her home.

"It's very scary," she said. "I'm facing my mortality. I don't know what the future holds for me."

The present, though, holds a lot of support. Her husband, Mark Gerardi, the parks maintenance supervisor for the city of Barstow, doesn't go out much in case she needs anything. Her son, Erik Chavez, 27, was serving in Afghanistan but is now home on "compassionate reassignment." Hibbetts tries to go to each of her daughter's appointments and log details they might need later.

"My life is about her, and that's it," Hibbetts said. "It's changed the lives of everyone in the family."

For Hibbetts Gerardi's daughter, Shannon Barkoci, 19, it's meant seeing her mother sick throughout her teen years. For family members, friends and Hibbetts Gerardi's co-workers at Donald Finch's dentistry practice, it generates concern and the frustration of not knowing what to do.

"It's hard on everybody," Mark Gerardi said. "Your life stops. ... Your biggest concern is for your family member to be well."

On Friday, he gave a swab of cheek cells (a "buccal swab") so his DNA can be typed. (This step costs about $50, but the fee is waived for anyone donating blood.) He could have directed it be tested only to see if he's a match for his wife, but he wanted be put on the national registry. He hopes someone will donate for his wife, so he'll find out if he can give to anyone else.

Finding a match for a bone marrow donor is much harder than finding someone with the same blood type, according to Tammy Rotellini, a spokeswoman for the Blood Bank of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. The donor and recipient must have basically the same genetic makeup, she said, so that the recipient's body does not reject the cells.

"You wonder how that happens," she said of finding people with such similar genes, "but it is true. That's why we need to get more people in the registry."

When Hibbetts updates family members on her daughter's status in a mass e-mail about once a month, she encourages them to join the registry.

"It's not likely they're going to be a match, but you never know," she said. "We have to ask."

Though Hibbetts Gerardi is scared, she tries to keep her thoughts positive.

"I have great faith in my doctor and the City of Hope and their drugs," she said.

"And the good Lord," her husband added. Yes, she agreed. She probably prays twice as much as she used to.

The outpouring of support she's received amazes her, she said. People she doesn't know send cards to express good wishes.

Hibbetts hopes to work with others to organize a bone marrow drive for her daughter in Barstow, where Hibbetts Gerardi was born and where many know the family. Hibbetts used to work for the city, and her husband, Art, retired from the police department. People in Barstow know her daughter, and Hibbetts believe they'll respond.

Barstow is, after all, known as the city with a heart.

"I want it to be the city with bone marrow," Hibbetts Gerardi said.