Local man finds match for life-saving bone marrow transplant

By Kyle B. Hansen

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 | 2:05 a.m.

Just a few days after his family held a bone marrow registry drive in West Las Vegas, Jeffery Watkins got good news: a donor had already been found.

A week later, Watkins and his family rushed to a San Diego-area hospital where he began chemotherapy Tuesday in preparation for a bone marrow transplant next week.

Watkins, 45, grew up in West Las Vegas, attended UNLV and has worked for the county’s Juvenile Justice Services for 20 years. He was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia last fall and required a transplant to survive, but no one in his family was a match to donate.

Bone marrow matches are especially hard to find for blacks and other minorities, so Watkins’ family helped organize a registry drive in hopes of finding donors for Watkins and other people in need of transplants.

While Watkins’ donor wasn’t found at the drive, his family is hopeful its efforts will benefit others waiting for transplants.

Watkins is now undergoing the first of 11 rounds of chemotherapy in five days at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla. After he gets the transplant May 3, he will have to stay close to the hospital. But if all goes well, doctors say, he may be able to return to Las Vegas by July 4.

Watkins’ wife, Connie, is in San Diego with him, but she can only stay for three weeks and then friends and family members plan to take turns staying with him until he returns home.

While the chemotherapy is difficult, so far Watkins is doing well, his wife said. The family is optimistic things are going to work out for him.

“This is his only chance of survival. It has to work,” Connie Watkins said. “It has to work, and we’re going to stay positive that it does.”