SANDY, Utah -- In his push to find a suitable bone marrow donor in the weeks and months after his wife was diagnosed with leukemia, Real Salt Lake midfielder Andy Williams never anticipated the complications that would arise along the way.
An abnormal chromosome found in Marcia Williams' blood means that chemotherapy alone is not enough to send the cancer into remission. And with her white blood cell count at dangerously low levels, getting a bone marrow transplant is critical now.
Finding a match in the national donor registry, however, has not happened.
With the window to find a donor closing rapidly, the Williams family and the charitable organization Soccer Unites are staging a series of bone narrow drives, both in Utah and nationally, over the next couple of weeks.
For Andy Williams, previous drives obviously haven't achieved the desired results for his wife. But he feels like they serve a greater purpose as well.
"It hasn't been so successful for us in getting a match," Williams said. "But it's been great that there's been a lot of turnout from fans and even from the public for all these bone marrow drives. If it doesn't help us, at least, hopefully, those people who register can help somebody in the future."
Current and former teammates are lining up to help out Andy and Marcia. Chris Brown and Cameron Knowles are staging bone marrow drives in Portland, Oregon. Scott Garlick is doing one as well in Tampa, Fla.
And at a drive scheduled for Jan. 29 at Rio Tinto Stadium, all 30 RSL players invited to preseason training camp will participate in the bone marrow matching process.
The urgency behind these drives is even bigger than previous fundraisers and bone marrow drives because the results from Marcia's most recent biopsy were grimmer than those that had preceded it.
She is scheduled to begin aggressive chemotherapy in February and a bone marrow donor must be found by the time it ends.
"The doctors have told us to look up until the very last day to try to find that match," said Deb Harper, a director for Soccer Unites. "It's extremely urgent."
Soccer Unites has aided the Williams family in sifting through the national donor registry every three days. It takes about two to three weeks after a donor is tested to upload the results into the national registry, so new names are added all the time.
Harper said it is a little disheartening that a match has not yet been located among the countless donors in that database.
If a donor cannot be found, the Williams family will likely try a newer treatment called a cord blood transplant. This procedure would extract stem cells from discarded umbilical cords and use those cells to produce new white blood cells.
It is a risky option given that it has been performed on few adults. But it might be the best choice they have left.
"The bone marrow transplant is still the best option," Andy Williams said. "But because of her situation being so rare -- with her blood tissue being so rare -- we haven't found a bone marrow match yet."
Fundraisers for Williams and his wife continue daily. But meeting the expenses associated with cancer treatment -- which can quickly balloon into the six-figure range -- has been tough in the current economic climate.
Just for the bone marrow transplant alone, it will cost at least $150,000.
"It's funny because everybody asks me the question, 'Doesn't she have insurance?,' Harper said. "Each of us has insurance. But you think of the co-pays and you think of the things that come over that [are not] covered. The bills she is getting now are [extensive]. They're not just a couple thousand here or there. They're huge."
For Andy Williams, this ordeal has put soccer in a different light. With preseason just days away, it will be hard to focus on playing. But playing, he said, is what Marcia wants him to do.
"She's as serious about my job as I am," Williams said, noting that his wife has urged him to stay fit in preparation for the season. "It's going be tough and I'm sure my teammates and the coaching staff will help me through it."
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