A Message from Stacie Tamaki

A message from The Flirty Girl

Hi Everyone!

In February of 2009 my cousin Tami, was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome which is also known as myelodysplasia, MDS and "pre-leukemia" Tami is young, only a year older then myself and a mom with young children who need her. When the diagnosis came with her only hope for a cure being a marrow transplant I immediately set to work to learn all I could about her condition, the National Marrow Donor Program and the marrow transplant process. Part of the reason I could immediately focus on helping Tami instead of figuring out how to get tested to see if I was a match for her was because I was already in the national registry.

I'd seen the story of Evan Chen a leukemia patient and student at Stanford University on the news. Evan needed a Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) to save his life. His fraternity and friends organized the largest bone marrow drive in the history of the National Donor Program and the Asian American Donor Program. Over the course of several days 2000 people, most of them complete strangers to Evan, were tissue typed.

Yes, the odds were against my being a perfect match but to me that was no reason not to go and try. The "what if I was" was a possibility I couldn't ignore.

A match was eventually found for Evan, but unfortunately by then the disease had taken its toll and he passed away in 1996 due to complications from the marrow transplant itself. It would seem his body was just too weak to withstand the procedure. I can't help but wonder if a donor had already existed in the registry and had been identified sooner, might things have ended differently?

To date I haven't matched any person in need but I have years left to be a match so I keep my fingers crossed that someday I'll be able to help someone. It honestly never occurred to me that one day my own cousin, someone I love so dearly, would be the one in need.

How to Help Tami
To be honest as soon as we received the initial diagnosis of 98% certainty that Tami had Myelodysplasia I skipped the shock, grieving and anger phases that accompany a catastrophic diagnosis and went straight to action. Since I was already in the registry what else could I do to help my cousin? For over a decade I have been self employed working in the wedding industry. I've also developed a following as a geeky girl who knows her way around a computer. My skill set now includes web design, web development, graphic design, online social media, publicity and marketing. Immediately I realized that I could take all I know about business and the internet and use all of it to help create a website and blog for Tami, then publicize them both through my existing contacts on the internet.

You can see what I do at www.StacieTamaki.com.

The Logo
When trying to come up with a design idea to create a logo for Tami my thoughts went to the two most obvious elements: That she is Japanese and that the test kits now use mouth swabs instead of needles, making the testing procedure painless.

This is what I came up with. A sakura or cherry blossom with stamens of mini swabs surrounded by the images of 4 larger swabs, just like the ones used in the mail-in test kits.

Rather then what it means you may be asking yourself why does Tami need a logo? Well that would be to market her need on business cards and postcards. Those of you who know me know that I'm out and about the Bay Area quite frequently so I figured what better way to let people know about not only my cousin's need but that thousands of people could use their help to find a marrow or stem cell match in the National Registry if they are a perfect match for someone.

And a Flirty Version of Tami
A month later I created this "flirty" cartoon version of Tami. For those who don't know a lot about me, when I designed my companies I created signature illustrations that define the look of my companies on a visual level. Over the years they've affectionately been dubbed my "Flirty Girls" world wide.

I was 2 days into the process of beginning to create a custom card and invitation line incorporating my "flirty girl" designs when Tami received her diagnosis. Needless to say it was a no brainer to put them on the back burner for now and concentrate on helping Tami first. In the near future I will create some note cards that I'll offer here on the site to help raise funds for publicizing Tami's donor drives. I'll keep you all posted when they're ready.