Patient Update: Asaya Bullock

Asaya loves karate, the color blue, and his little sister Anaya.  They are best friends and they get along like two peas in a pod. He is a fun-loving little boy who is surrounded by loving parents and the support of family and friends, but he needs your help.

We have been working with Asaya Bullock and his family since 2014.  Asaya has been the focus of 163 bone marrow donor drives, where we have registered 2487 potential donors on his behalf, and we continue to stand by his family for emotional, logistical and financial support.  Unfortunately, these efforts have not been enough to find his cure.

This beautiful little boy needs your help.

At the age of 8 months, Asaya was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called I-PEX.  His parents were told he would not live past the age of two. You can read more about his story here.

In July, Asaya will be 7, which means that he has been living with this rare disease for almost seven years.  He is enrolled in first grade, but he misses class often due to his compromised immune system. This past winter was rough on the family; the flu lasted for 6 weeks and Asaya lost a lot of weight.  He receives IgG treatments (Immunoglubulin replacement therapy) every other week, administered by his mom so they don’t have to spend so much time traveling to the doctor. The treatments hope to increase the IgG levels in his blood, which to help fight infections.

Asaya is in desperate need of a matching bone marrow donor.  His father Vincent is African American, and his mother Charlene is West Indian Caribbean.  Unfortunately, Asaya’s ethnicity is under represented in the bone marrow registry. Not enough potential donors have joined, so a match has not yet been identified.  Could you be his match? Do you have friends or family that could be a life saving match? Please consider joining the registry here http://join.bethematch.org/TeamAsaya.  Share this post with your social media network and ask your friends to join using the links below.  Get involved and host a marrow drive in your community to register more potential life savers. Learn how to do that here. 

Thanks for reading, registering, and sharing.  We need to work together to find a match for little Asaya.