Learn About Aplastic Anemia

​Team Watience was founded by the mother of Hadi Abdur Rasheed, a child who succumbed to aplastic anemia, a rare disease that damages the bone marrow and the hematopoietic stem cells within them.

Team Watience was founded by the mother of Hadi Abdur Rasheed, a child who succumbed to aplastic anemia, a rare disease that damages the bone marrow and the hematopoietic stem cells within them. The organization is dedicated to increasing public awareness of aplastic anemia and other bone marrow failure diseases. Aplastic anemia patients, their caregivers, their families and interested collaborators share their experiences on healthy grieving, mental health and disease-support programs, especially within the South Asian and Muslim communities.

If you know little or nothing about this rare and dreadful disease, please take a few minutes to learn about it.

Aplastic anemia is a rare blood disease in which bone marrow and the hematopoietic stem cells (red cells, white cells and platelets) are damaged.

This disease can be moderate, severe or very severe. People with severe or very severe aplastic anemia are at risk for life-threatening infections or bleeding. The only current "cure" for aplastic anemia is a bone marrow transplant.

Aplastic anemia is caused by the destruction of blood-forming stem cells in bone marrow. These stem cells normally develop into three types of blood cells: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. The symptoms of aplastic anemia vary, depending on how severe it is and how low blood counts are. Some typical symptoms include feeling tired and out of breath after only a little exercise; the tendency to bruise and bleed easily; bleeding that won’t stop; and infections and an associated fever.

It can strike at any age regardless of race or gender. However, it is diagnosed more often in children, young adults and older adults. It also appears more often in Asian-Americans. Each year, between 600 and 900 people in the U.S. learn that they have aplastic anemia.

Team Watience’s goal is to raise awareness of aplastic anemia and the need for bone marrow research. You can show financial and spiritual support by purchasing Hadi’s Crew T-shirts and long-sleeve shirts from this site, or coffee and espresso from Weird Brothers Coffee (weirdbrothers.com) and Hadi Cakes at Jenny Cakes Bakery (jennycakesbakery.net)