Meet the Phenomenal Arnetta Banks

In 1992 Arnetta developed a horrible pain in her back. Visits to multiple doctors revealed nothing. She was given Demural for pain but it persisted. Even through the pain, she was always very active, walking every day for exercise.

One night in bed she felt extreme pain. Unable to sleep, she got up and went into the living room and lay down on the hard floor. That seemed to ease the pain somewhat. But in the morning when she started to get up, she got to all fours and heard her back snap. In excruciating pain, she told her husband he would have to help her up. He insisted she go to the doctor again. X-rays were done and large lesions were found on the spine.

Her doctor used the word “lesions”, but Arnetta, having worked in the medical field, knew the doctor meant tumors. The diagnosis was Multiple Myeloma Leukemia.

Arnetta Banks, 49 years old, lives in Oakland, California. She has come a long way from the time her entire family of 14 lived in tents in Central California, having moved from Bearden, Arkansas when Arnetta was four years old. They settled in Kingsburg, California, where her entire family worked in the fields to survive. They picked cotton, cut grapes, and worked the fields harvesting a variety of seasonal crops.

Although poor, she finished high school in 1966 and married that same year. Arnetta and her husband moved to Seattle where Arnetta, drawn to a career in the caring professions, worked for several hospitals and clinics, starting as a nurse's aide. She worked for Pioneer Square Health Station in Seattle, traveling from site to site, working on skid row, caring for addicts, alcoholics, and homeless people. As Arnetta attended college and gained increasing work experience, her positions advanced. She was also blessed with a daughter, Nia.

In 1988, Arnetta returned to Central California. Her father had died and she wanted to be near her mother and grandmother. Soon thereafter, Arnetta accepted a position as a medical clinic manager. She had, as she says, arrived. Life was great.

Then in 1992, the diagnosis of Multiple Myeloma Leukemia. "My whole perfect world fell apart" Arnetta says. "The doctor told me that without a bone marrow transplant, I would die within three years." Finding a donor match, however, would be a problem. The best chance would be Arnetta's immediate family. If her father had lived, and her mother had not contracted arthritis, they would have been tested for a match. As it was, all 12 of Arnetta's siblings were tested without success.

A search of the nation's bone marrow registry of volunteer donors was conducted with no success. Marrow types are inherited. Therefore an unrelated match is most likely within a patient's racial or ethnic group. The possibility of finding a match in the bone marrow registries is much smaller for Arnetta, since she is an African-American. All minorities, including African-Americans, are under-represented in all the mainstream national registries. Among the 4.2 million blood samples registered for matches, only 248,000 are African-American. Furthermore, of 50,000 transplants performed each year worldwide, only about 291, total, have been to Black recipients.

In 1993, with time running short, a relatively new procedure was tried with only a 30% chance of success. Arnetta received a transplant of her own healthy stem cells, an autologous transplant. Jubilation! Arnetta's condition improved.

"I made a promise to God and myself that when this was over, I would help others who needed a transplant. I would dedicate my life. I wanted to make a difference by increasing the number of African-Americans and other minorities in the national marrow donor registries . . . One hundred twenty thousand people of color died last year waiting for transplants," said Arnetta. Feeling ever better, Arnetta became a volunteer for an African-American bone marrow recruitment group.

The happy ending is yet to come. In August, 1996 Arnetta experienced a relapse. Pain increased in her left femur and left pelvic area. Radiation treatments resumed at the time.

Arnetta also has an additional problem. She has none of what are called “markers”. These are indications either in the blood or urine of the existence of cancer. Because of this she must have bone biopsies every four to six months in order to detect the cancer’s presence.

There is a problem with awareness in the Latin-American and African-American communities of the lack of participation in donor programs. Many people are just not aware that marrow types are inherited. Therefore an unrelated match is most likely within a patient's racial or ethnic group.

Currently Arnetta is still not in remission but is taking chemotherapy, not radiation. She remains extremely upbeat. “I have good days and bad days,” she said, “but I deal with it.”

The two charts below reflect the percentages by ethnicity on the registry, and number of donors by ethnicity.

African American	7.8%
Asian/Pacific Islander	5.7%
Hispanic	7.1%
Native American	1.6%
Caucasian	71.5%

African American	305,440
American Indian/Alaska Native	51,695
Asian/Pacific Islander	227,146
Caucasian	2,154,297
Hispanic	305,724
Multiple Race/Other	64,562
Unknown	740,285

To obtain information regarding blood or bone marrow donation, you can contact the National Marrow Donor Program at:

National Marrow Donor Program
Suite 500
3433 Broadway Street Northeast
Minneapolis, MN 55413

For information specifically regarding Latino or African-American Donor programs: