The Living Church tells the story Cristy Kessler, her fight to beat a combination of auto-immune diseases and the fund set up by her partner, the Rev. Liz Zivanov.
Douglas LeBlanc writes:
Three autoimmune diseases threaten the life of Cristy Kessler, and her fight to stay alive has taken her to Istanbul, Turkey, for an experimental treatment involving stem-cell and bone-marrow transplants.
The One of Our Own Fund has helped Kessler, a 39-year-old associate professor of education at the University of Hawaii, raise an initial payment of $22,000 for the pre-transplant therapy she will receive in Turkey. She arrived in Turkey Feb. 26 to begin preparing for the transplant procedure.
Organizers of the fund have also raised an additional $35,000 for debts accumulated in Kessler’s 7-year struggle with scleroderma, vasculitis and ankylosing spondylitis. They’re now trying to raise $55,000 to cover the transplant stage of treatment.
The Rev. Liz Zivanov, rector of St. Clement’s Church, Honolulu, is Kessler’s partner and a cofounder of the fund. She launched a weblog, From Here to Istanbul, to post reports about Kessler’s therapy at Anadolu Medical Center, an affiliate of Johns Hopkins Medicine.