Benefit Dinner and Auction Planned to Support Mayor Neil Johnson

Recently, Bonney Lake Mayor Neil Johnson and is in need of a bone marrow transplant.

To help ease the growing financial burden of medical bills on his family, Team Bonney Lake from Relay for Life is throwing a in his honor at Swiss Park on May 18, 6 p.m. 100 percent of the money raised from the event will go to Johnson.

He was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML), a type of cancer of the marrow and blood. CML accounts for about 10 percent to 15 percent of all leukemia. According to cancer.org, about 4,870 new cases of CML were expected to be diagnosed in 2010.  New drugs to treat CML first became available in 2001, prior to that the survival rate of patients with CML was about 90 percent.

On March 15, Johnson was admitted to he University of Washington Medical Center with a high fever and started undergoing intravenous chemotherapy. On March 17, his condition was elevated to the final stage of CML, called “Blast Crisis” phase. He continues to be treated with chemotherapy, but the best option for surviving this type of cancer is a bone marrow transplant.

Most often, the bone marrow donor is a sibling or close relative. Mayor Johnson’s two siblings have both been tested and were found to not be a match for a transplant. The search has started for a matched unrelated donor.

If you'd like to follow his progress, Johnson's family has created a free information page at carepages.com/goneil.

Tickets for the dinner are $20 presale, $25 at the door and you can purchase them online at teambonneylake.org. In addition, seperate donations will be accepted at in Bonney Lake.

Everyone is encouraged to join the national bone marrow registry, you never know if you could be a potential match for Johnson or the thousands of people living with leukemia today. To register your information, visit BeTheMatch.org or call 1-800-MARROW-2.

A match will typically be found from an individual of similar ethnic background, but the need for non-Caucasian donors is much greater than that of Caucasians.  As a member of an extended Pacific Islander family, Mayor Johnson’s wife Mary Ann Johnson would like to encourage those of mixed racial backgrounds to join the registry. There is no charge to be added to the registry, but donations will be accepted to help cover administrative costs.