On Friday last week, best-selling author Michael Lewis posted the two photos of Baylor Fredrickson shown above on his Facebook page.
“I want for people to see two pictures of Baylor Fredrickson,” he wrote. “The first was taken before his latest round of chemotherapy, the second after — and just before he received a cord blood transplant. The transplant failed. Baylor’s mom relates below what this means for Baylor — another round of ever more dangerous chemotherapy followed by an even more experimental bid for a cure. It’s lucky that Baylor is unusually brave; it’s sad that he is being forced, at seven years old, to prove it.”
Baylor, who has cancer, used to be on a Little League team coached by Lewis. The Berkeley author first posted about the boy, who lives in Albany, and the urgent need to find a bone marrow donor match for him, on his Facebook page in May after he discovered why he hadn’t been showing up for practice.
Despite Lewis’ initial post reaching over 31 million people, more than three months later, a match has not been found.
The Asian-American Donor’s program received requests for 7,000 home kits from likely donors. As Lewis writes: “Seven thousand half Asian-half Caucasian adults felt the urge to donate their bone marrow cells, to save the life of this brave child. Only 30% of those kits have been returned, however. I sort of doubt that 70% of the people who felt a brief impulse to save a child’s life actually changed their minds. But it’s obviously harder to follow through on such an impulse than it is to act upon it. To those people I’d now like to drop all dignity and beg: please follow through. Do whatever the kit asks you to do, and send it back in. It’s not too late, but one day it may be.”
Read the full Michael Lewis Facebook post. Learn more about the campaign to find a donor match for Baylor on A Match for Bay on Facebook. And please share this story, and Michael Lewis’ Facebook post as much as you can to spread the word and help save Baylor’s life.
Related:
Michael Lewis: 7-year-old Baylor needs your help to survive (06.14.14)
Michael Lewis: Save a 7-year-old’s life, feel like a million dollars (06.02.14)
