Ailing dockyard worker needs stem cell donor

Dockyard worker Jeremy Chow takes a selfie with his wife Evelyn (left), his two daughters Jayla and Maile, and the family cat Piku. Chow is currently battling leukemia and so far has had no luck in his search for a potentially life-saving stem cell donation.

Peter Mallett, Staff Writer ~

The family of a dockyard worker recently diagnosed with leukemia is searching for a potentially life-saving stem cell donation.

Jeremy Chow, a 42-year-old shipwright joiner from Fleet Maintenance Facility (FMF) Cape Breton, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in November 2018. Because Chow is of mixed race – Chinese and English – he and his family have had no luck finding a donor through national and world-wide donor registries.

Positive stem cell matches are determined through inherited ancestral tissue types and other genetic markers. But there is a significant race-based unevenness in the donor list worldwide. Approximately 70 per cent are Caucasian, 16 per cent are Asian, and an even smaller percentage are mixed race.

“A donor could come from anyone, anywhere. We have been actively searching the registries, but nothing is coming up as a match yet,” said Evelyn Chow, Jeremy’s wife.

While Jeremy was wrapping up chemotherapy at a Vancouver hospital last week, Evelyn and Jeremy’s friends and co-workers were busy spreading the word about his situation.

“We could never have imagined this was going to happen to Jeremy and that there was such a shortage,” said Evelyn. “The effort now is not only to help Jeremy find a donor, but also to raise alarm bells about the shortage in an effort to help others who are in a similar situation.”

Last week, Evelyn attended a stem cell donor clinic at the University of British Columbia in hopes of finding a match. Evelyn along with her family and friends, plan to organize a stem cell drive in Vancouver at the end of April to continue creating awareness of this shortage and increase donor registrants of Asian heritage.

She says that despite his diagnosis and side effects of the treatment, Jeremy is in good spirits and continues to have a positive outlook from this experience. But he is considerably weakened, and having to live in Vancouver since November of last year to receive treatment, the separation from his two children Jayla, 8, and Maile, 10, is beginning to take its toll.

Evelyn and the children conduct regular video chats to cheer him up.

“He is doing well and is responding to treatment. What typically happens next after chemotherapy is complete is a patient would undergo a stem cell transplant, so we are still holding out hope that this will happen.”

Allison Verley, who has worked alongside Jeremy for the past 14 years, says she is proud of how the entire ship repair unit has rallied around Jeremy and his family.

“When we heard the news about his diagnosis everyone in the unit was rocked by it because he is such a young and healthy man and so full of positivity,” says Verley.

Jeremy has received substantial support from his
co-workers from volunteering to do maintenance around the house, to making meals for his family, to fundraising to help offset the travelling costs between Victoria and Vancouver and Jeremy’s accommodation while he is living in Vancouver. The family is truly grateful to his “Dockyard Family.’’

Verley and Evelyn are encouraging everyone to go online and find out more about becoming a stem cell donor at the Canada Blood Services webpage: https://blood.ca/en/stem-cells/eligibility-and-registration/register-donate-stem-cells.