Wedding plans on hold, Israeli couple scrambles to find a bone marrow donor

A month before they were supposed to be married, a young Israeli couple is scrambling to save the life of the bride-to-be.

Roni Cohen, 27, and Bar Armon, 29, from Hod Hasharon, have been together for four years. Bar proposed to Roni on vacation in the Philippines earlier this year.

The two then dived into their wedding planning, booking the Eco hall in Hadera and setting the date: September 17.

But then, just a few weeks ago, as the anticipation for the happy day grew, things started to go wrong.

Roni’s health suddenly deteriorated. Small lesions formed on her face, her neck muscles cramped, glands in her neck swelled, as did the roof of her mouth, and blue marks appeared on her legs.

The family doctor sent them straight to the emergency room, telling them only that he was “worried.” A simple blood test confirmed their worst fears — Roni was diagnosed with leukemia.

“It doesn’t make sense that this is happening now,” Bar told Hadashot television news on Sunday, in a primetime nationwide broadcast with one purpose: Roni desperately needs a bone marrow transplant. No database in Israel or abroad has a match, so the couple reached out to Israeli media begging for help.

Roni comes from a Yemenite and North African family, and only people with Yemenite or combined Yemenite-North African heritage can donate the marrow she needs. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are descended from Yemenite Jewish immigrants, but only a fraction of the Israeli public has registered as bone marrow donors.

Ezer Mizion, a nonprofit that runs the biggest bone marrow registry in Israel and the Jewish world — bone marrow transplants rely heavily on finding a genetically similar donor, so registries tend to focus their efforts on specific communities to increase the chances of matching patients with donors — is opening dozens of nationwide swabbing sites on August 19 in a bid to find Roni a donor.

Joining the database as a potential donor involves a simple swab of one’s saliva, nothing more.

The organization is asking all Israelis, but especially those with Yemenite and North African ancestry, to get swabbed.

A list of the locations for joining the registry can be found on Ezer Mizion’s website or via a hotline the organization set up at 1-800-236-236.

“Our only chance to find a donor is to ask everyone to go and get checked by giving just a sample of their spit. That’s all it takes,” pleaded Bar in the broadcast. “And if people don’t leave their homes and don’t go and do this” — he choked up — “they have to do this. I just want to marry her already. I want this whole thing to be behind us and to get back to our lives.”

Roni agreed. “The first priority after I get better is to marry Bar.”