Prayers needed

I wrote about my childhood friend Allison a little less than a year ago in my Sunday, January 20, 2008 post. In it, I described her enormous struggles: blindness, bipolar disorder, attempted suicide, separation and pending divorce, estrangement from her younger son—it was really more than anyone can handle. Well it has only gotten worse. Her older brother Alex, who was diagnosed with lymphoma, was in need of a bone marrow transplant and Allison was a “match.” She flew up to N.Y. to have the procedure done. It involves filtering stem cells from the bloodstream, which takes place over multiple days and is quite painful. Going on her fourth day, Alex took a turn for the worse. His lymphoma turned into leukemia and was basically given a death sentence. They continued administering chemo up until the very end and he died a week later. How could this happen? Here she was going up there to help her brother get better only to wind up attending his funeral. He was 53. Please, please if you could include her in your prayers; she’s living one day at a time at this point and I’m really worried about her.