How New York Post readers helped save a toddler’s life – New York Post

Amelia-Grace Harpham is a 16-year-old with wild, wavy hair and a love of reading. She prefers sci-fi shows like Dr. Who and Star Trek to the usual teen fare. And the rising junior at Hastings HS in Hastings-on-Hudson always says yes to a competitive game of capture the flag.

Its hard to believe that little more than a decade ago, this vibrant teen (who then went by Gracie) was fighting for her life against a rare blood disease that left doctors baffled. In 2004 and 2005, The Post ran several stories about the then-toddlers mysterious disease and generous readers helped raise $85,000 for a bone marrow transplant that saved her life.

Today, the only telltale signs of Amelias fragile past are the scars on her chest from various treatments.

A couple of friends have seen them, she told The Post. People are interested, but they dont know the scope of it.

Hers was a harrowing experience riddled with frightening prognoses and statistics. One doctor predicted she had only a 50 percent chance of living past the age of 29. Her mother, Heather Harpham, has chronicled it all in a memoir, Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After (Henry Holt, out now).

When Amelia was born on March 30, 2001, she looked perfectly healthy; but hours after her birth, doctors realized something was malfunctioning in her blood. She had her first transfusion within the first week of her life, and it would be the start of a scary routine that spanned her next three years. Unable to produce sufficient red blood cells, the baby needed transfusions about every three weeks.

After each transfusion, Amelia would look pink and healthy. But that energy would drain like a battery, and she would turn wan and listless until the next one. The family was told that becoming reliant on transfusions could eventually prove lethal.

Doctors never landed on a specific diagnosis or cause, but they were certain of one thing: Amelia would be cured by a bone marrow transplant.

But the procedure on a toddler doesnt come without risks. The ideal situation would involve using stem cells harvested from a newborns umbilical cord rather than an adults bone marrow. A doctor suggested that Heather and her partner (now husband), Brian Morton, have another baby, because a sibling would have a one in four chance of being a match. Afraid of having two tragically ill children, the couple resisted the idea.

But shortly thereafter, Heather discovered she was unexpectedly pregnant. After baby boy Gabriel was born, blood from his umbilical cord was saved and indeed, he was an exact match for his then-2-year-old sisters bone marrow.

Doctors again stressed, however, that such a transplant process, which also involved chemotherapy, could be grueling for the toddler and possibly overwhelm her fragile body. Heather and Brian who lived in Park Slope at the time made the agonizing decision to go ahead with the risky procedure at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC. But there was still more bad news: They would need to pay $85,000 not covered by insurance.

Thats when neighbor Kathy Sears jumped in. As covered by The Post at the time, she organized a block party and a raffle with all of the proceeds going toward Amelias medical treatments, Perfect strangers from all over the city turned up.

People came out of the woodwork, asking how they could help, Sears recalled. Little old ladies walking up to me shoving $25 checks into my hand. It was so beautiful.

Heather remembered a man showing up to the block party with an envelope of money collected from his colleagues at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

All told, more than $85,000 was raised, which helped when the tab came to more than first anticipated. According to Heather, money given by Post readers made up the bulk of the donations.

I cannot overestimate what Post readers did. It gave us the sense that all of New York was in our corner. In this odd way, I would wish for anyone to have the experience of being in need, being fragile and being frightened and [then to] be utterly embraced, supported and carried by a community, she said.

Amelia now has no physical restrictions. She visits Duke every other year for checkups, but is more focused on her studies.

I enjoy all of my subjects, but I love English, she said. I would like to be a writer. I keep journals of important stuff thats happened.

She also has a typical sibling relationship with Gabriel, now 14. As their mom explains: Its like, You can give me the remote, I gave you my stem cells.

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How New York Post readers helped save a toddler's life - New York Post