Hall of Famer Carew's daughter dies of leukemia

By The Associated Press
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 18, 1996

ORANGE, Calif. - Baseball Hall of Famer Rod Carew's daughter Michelle fought off leukemia for seven months, cracking jokes until it took her voice. She died Wednesday with family and friends at her hospital bedside. She was 18.

''We told her that we love her, that we're all here,'' said her father Rod Carew. ''And I just told her to have a safe journey.''

The Hall of Famer with the Minnesota Twins and California Angels had put together a drive to find a donor with compatible bone marrow. The effort drew more than 70,000 responses, but none matched Michelle's.

''The percentages weren't in her favor as far as finding a match,'' Carew said in the lobby of Children's Hospital of Orange County. ''She just ran out of time. ... She just lost the battle.''

Michelle's plight brought home the problems facing people with African ancestry and other non-whites who need transplants. A preponderance of marrow donors are people with European backgrounds, meaning others face long odds of finding compatible tissue.

Michelle's parents and two sisters were incompatible. Carew has African, West Indian and Panamanian ancestry, while her mother has Russian Jewish forebears.

Maybe some of the 70,000 respondents can save other lives, Carew said.

The hospital received thousands of calls and letters. Many promised to be tested as donors, some sent gifts. One woman confessed she had trouble accepting interracial marriages, but ''your family just taught me that skin color is so insignificant!''

Michelle was diagnosed in September 1995 with non-lymphocytic leukemia. On March 22, Dr. Mitchell Cairo tried a relatively rare operation, a transplant of umbilical cord blood in an effort to rebuild Michelle's immune system.

''We really didn't have enough time to see the fruits of that transplant,'' said Cairo, director of blood and bone marrow transplants at the hospital. Her treatment, including chemotherapy, caused complications Michelle couldn't handle, he said.

She died of cardiac and respiratory failure at 6:28 a.m., the hospital said. Since March 22, she had been kept in a sterile room, family and other visitors sealed off by a window.

''When they saw that the end was nearing, they opened the room so she could be hugged by her family and friends,'' said hospital spokesman Orman Day.

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