All agree it's hard to find a match for Amy Katz.

You can take that two ways:

This freshly minted teenager is one special cookie, what with an Army marching at her side, her poster-girl good looks plastered all over town and even jewelry designed in her honor.

		Editor's note This is one in an occasional series profiling Amy Katz, a Mt. Lebanon teenager who has a rare form of leukemia and is searching for a bone marrow donor. Today: Amy helps save another.

Then again, being one of a kind can be downright life-threatening when you are looking for a bone marrow donor match.

An eighth-grader at Jefferson Middle School in Mt. Lebanon, Amy was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia in autumn 2003. Since then, she has been in and out of hospitals and must take daily medication. Her only hope for a cure is a stem cell transplant, often called a bone marrow transplant. And for that, she needs a donor. No one in her family can help because they don't, well, match up with a number of genetic markers.

A band of volunteers about 150 strong and using the melodious moniker Amy's Army is on a nationwide search to find a match by sponsoring a series of blood drives and screenings. Many have been profiled on these South pages.

Despite dozens of such events, it's no luck for Amy yet. But because of her message, somewhere out there a 41-year-old woman has a new lease on life.

And Jennifer M. Blodgett, of Upper St Clair, has found new priorities.

Mrs. Blodgett, 35, a mother of two preschoolers, became a donor after reading about Amy in September.

"At the time, I remember really feeling for that family, but, like all busy people, just sort of filed it away in my memory bank."

A few days later, she was out for a walk with Madelyn, 5, and Drew, 3, (the family lived in Mt. Lebanon at the time) and passed a sign advertising an Amy's Army blood drive at Temple Emanuel in Mt. Lebanon.

"Something clicked, I took the kids home, went back, gave blood and did the screening."

A few weeks later, she got a call: She was a match for a very ill 41-year-old woman. (Patient names and addresses are kept confidential.) Would she agree to donate?

"There was never even a question," Mrs. Blodgett said.

Procedure easy

There are two ways to donate. One is to give marrow, generally taken from a site in the lower back, under general anesthetic. The second, and some say easier, is to undergo a Peripheral Blood Stem Cell donation, or PBSC, and this is what Mrs. Blodgett did.

		Related article Here's how to help

Here's what happens in this procedure: After a match is found and the donor agrees to give, the cancer patient undergoes treatment to zap his or her body of cancer cells.

Donation day is set; then five days before, the donor goes to a local hospital and gets a drug by injection which pushes, so to speak, stem cells from the bone into the bloodstream. More medicine to increase stem cell production is taken the next three days. Then, on the fifth day, the donor returns to the hospital and, in a procedure much like a simple blood platelet donation, stem cells are collected through an IV in the arm. The rest of the blood products are put back, via an IV, into the donor. Mrs. Blodgett described it as a "kind of in and out, a drawing and returning of blood at the same time.''

"I watched a movie while it was being done," Mrs. Blodgett said. "That's about how long the whole thing took."

Mrs. Blodgett said she had no pain from the Dec. 14 procedure at West Penn Hospital. "I just felt a little achy. ... Heck, I didn't even lose my appetite," she said.

But the process did change her, she said. "My priorities were straight this holiday season," she said. "I enjoyed what is important, time with children and my husband, Scott."

The couple met while they were students at Penn State University. Mrs. Blodgett is a teacher and he is an architectural engineer.

"Please add one more to the list of lives Amy has changed," Mrs. Blodgett said.

Thus far, Amy's Army has added more than 7,000 names to the HLA Registry, part of the national bone marrow donor program and more than nine donations such as Mrs. Blodgett's, have been documented. HLA stands for human leukocyte antigens, the genetic information encoded on white blood cells.

"Amy is the face and story [in Pittsburgh], but this story and need is repeated everywhere, every day," said Lisa Desrochers, HLA recruitment director.

Amy's OK for now

She is holding steady. She's kept up her grades and plays the trumpet. Shy by nature, she's made her peace with seeing her face on posters advertising her cause all over town and on the Internet. Still, she doesn't talk much about what she refers to as "all this." Indeed, her mother, Lisz Katz, reports that Amy struggled through a live television interview Monday on KDKA. "But she did it because she needs to get the word out."

But Amy is never without a bright blue rubbery wrist band with the words, "Be a Donor," a bracelet that has become a hot item in for folks of all ages.

Amy and her family spent Hanukkah and the new year with extended family and friends. It is important to note that, while the family's health insurance covers the cost of most cancer treatments, it does not pay for the $65 to $100 cost per screening. That math will give you some idea of how much work has been done here.

The latest fund-raiser, Amy's Army Rocks with Margo B.! is an all-ages night of family fun and will be begin at 6 o'clock tonight at the Hard Rock Cafe in Station Square. There will be a fashion show; Amy and her sisters, Katie, 10, and Jenny, 14, will be on the runway, followed by a concert with Margo B., 17, a singer and songwriter from Upper St. Clair.

When she was interviewed in September, Amy said, in the matter-of-fact parlance of a teenager: "This Army business is not just about me. It's about getting out the word about bone marrow transplants. I am only the messenger."

And tonight, that messenger rocks.

Tickets at $25 are available at Hard Rock Cafe or by visiting www.ticketmaster.com (search for Margo B). Doors open at 6 o'clock tonight. The fashion show is at 7 and the concert is at 8.