Helf for a local sailor

[Quest]

Ok, I've never posted one of these before but here goes.

There's a local sailor who's raced in a few Harvest Moons and goes to the Turtle Club every Wed to watch us enjoy ourselves who could use some help.  His name is Greg Ince, he's in MD Anderson Hospital and battling the big C.  He's already fought leukemia once and thought he had it beat.  Now he's been back in the hospitial for several weeks fighting it again.  He needs to undergo a bone marrow transplant (again).  The good news is they have found him a donor that is a perfect match.  The bad news is it takes a pretty severe treatment process to get him ready and then aftercare.  He's getting daily blood transfusions to keep his white cell count up and running.

Greg is a real nice guy.  He lives on his boat on the south side of the lake and goes sailing with anybody who asks for a deckhand.  He's helped deliver boats for new owners and only asked for help with the airfare.  We've had dinner/drinks with him a few times and he's was always trying to make sure everyone had a good time.  He had talked about getting into racing but wasn't sure since in his opinion he didn't know squat and didn't want to pull anybody down.  I know that doesn't matter to most of us and we hooked him up with a couple of HMR rides and took him to a couple of rum races/parties and he thought we were a good group (we had him fooled apparantly  ).

Anyway, if any of you donate blood (I can't  ), doing so in Greg's name would be a big help.  I would have posted this earlier, but I just found out late last nite he was in this condition.

I don't know if any of ya'll know him, but there are several of us on another board that are putting the word out to lend him a hand.

Thanks ya'll, see you tonight.

[Chuck]

I gave this week, prior to seeing your post.  I went to the giveblood.org website and put in a voucher in his name but it would be helpful you had an address for him.  Just to make sure it goes to the right person.

[Quest]

Ok, I'll see if I can get the address and post it.

[BJSailor]

I'll be donating in his name this week.

[Quest]

If anyone wants to donate in Greg's behalf send me a PM and I'll send you his full name and M.D. Anderson medical ID so he can get credit for it.

He owns/lives on a Morgan 382 named Catharsis.  She's over on C dock at Portofina marina.  He's a Hodgkins Lymphoma survivor (from 5 years ago) and had a bone marrow transplant after 9 rounds of Chemo/Radiation.  A few weeks ago, his body quit producing white blood cells and he's working on holding on for 4-6 weeks until another blood marrow transplant.  They've already found him a 10/10 donor.  The fun part is he's maxed out his insurance and they won't pay the approx $500,000 for a second bone marrow transplant.

He's sailed several HMR regattas and when he's healthy he grabs a few friends every wed night and gets a corner table at the turtle club and cheers every boat that rounds the finish mark headed to the next leg.

Between this thread and some on some other boards we've already got about 10 units being donated.  The folks at the marina down on Boliver have the Blood Drive Van headed out there in the near future if anyone is interested in going down there. (just let me know and I'll go get the dates and exact location, I also think they maybe doing the BBQ thing too).

Thanks again for all of you willing to help out.

[thomas]

I called and spoke with the staff at MD Anderson. To donate at MD, you have to call and make an appointment. You can't just show up. For blood, its an hour or less. For platlets, which is what they need the most, its about two hours. The way it benefits the person is the hospital gives them credit for the donation against their account. They get the most credit for platlets.