A Brooklyn Heights father needs your help.
Kieran Holohan, 42, is bravely battling leukemia and now desperately needs a bone marrow transplant.
His diagnosis last month is especially heartbreaking since he and his wife, Suzanne, have a nine-month-old daughter, Riley.
“You’re basically being told that you’re going to die,” Holohan, a former prosecutor in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, told the New York Post.
Holohan, who is undergoing chemotherapy, said his chance for survival is significantly higher with a bone marrow transplant.
In hope of finding a match, a donor drive has been scheduled for January 23 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Cornerstone Tavern, 961 Second Avenue in Manhattan.
Web sites publicizing donor drives explain the importance and ease of being tested, noting, “What many people don’t realize is that today’s medical technology allows testing of potential donors as well as actual transplants with little disruption to the life of the donor(s). Testing is as simple as a swab of the inside of the cheek. The actual donor process is as simple as giving blood. The donor gives blood from an arm; a machine separates the blood-forming cells and returns the blood to the donor through the other arm.”
Holohan has created a Facebook page asking people to get tested at the donor drive or donate money to the cause. Each test costs $100.
“I want to be at my daughter’s wedding,” Holohan told the Post. “It’s all I think of. This might kill me. It might not. I’m not afraid of the death. I’m afraid of my daughter not having a father.”
To donate to the National Marrow Donor Program’s Be The Match Foundation, visit www.marrow.org.
