JENNIFER WHITNEY / Staff

On Monday, September 8, the NCH Community Blood Center held a blood and bone marrow drive to benefit Kenny Conidaris, a 15 year old Estero High School student who has been fighting aplastic anemia for two and a half years and now has an urgent need to find a bone marrow match to cure his disease. Conidaris came by with his mother to hand out bracelets created by his soccer team mates that read "Kenny" on one side and "Play Hard- Fight Hard" on the other as a thank you to donors.

BONITA SPRINGS — Kenny Conidaris is sick and tired of being sidelined from playing soccer.

He doesn’t even feel sick and tired anymore but the doctor’s orders are no contact sports.

The 15-year-old Estero teen who was diagnosed two years ago with severe aplastic anemia is back home from Duke Cancer Center in Durham, N.C. He returned home after doctors put him on hold from a bone marrow transplant.

“I am a weird kid,” he said with a smirk, relaying how his doctor described a perplexing turn of events.

“No,” his mother, Kathy Conidaris, 44, interjected. “He said ‘unique.’”

Either way, Kenny unexpectedly was able to start his sophomore year at Estero High School this past week, having missed the start of the new school year after being in Durham for several weeks.

The family had been waiting at Duke for the final go-ahead for Kenny’s father, Ken Conidaris, to be the teen’s bone marrow donor when biopsy results of Kenny’s own marrow showed it appeared to be functioning and producing new blood cells, his mother said.

Still, Kenny’s blood counts remain too low.

Instead of going forward with the transplant, with risks because Kenny’s father is not a perfect bone marrow match, the doctors at Duke decided to monitor Kenny’s blood counts and see if they go up, she said.

“We are in a waiting game,” she said. “They tell us his body will tell us what to do. Now it may be another underlying disease. He is a puzzle. I thought it was a miracle but they said he’s a puzzle.”

The family drove 12 hours straight last weekend to get home.

Kenny is glad he doesn’t need the transplant, at least for now.

He made it back in time on Sept. 8 to visit a blood and bone marrow drive held on his behalf by the Community Blood Center outside an NCH Healthcare System building off Pine Ridge Road in North Naples.

Eighteen people registered to be potential new bone marrow donors, along with giving blood, said Laura Rosen, a blood drive organizer.

Like anybody faced with a life-threatening illness, Kenny longs for his old life back.

“I want it over,” he said, plopped on the family couch after school one day this past week. “I have been too patient.”

His friends at school are happy he is home. But he won’t watch teammates on the Estero High soccer team at afternoon practice or check out teammates on the San Carlos Scorpion soccer club at practice. That’s too hard, especially since he’s feeling pretty good.

“I haven’t played soccer in ... I don’t know how long, a year,” he said. “I’ve always done contact sports.”

Now he hangs out with his three sisters and the family’s four dogs, the newest and largest member of the herd being Duke, a 130-pound Great Dane, named after the university hospital.

“I feel good,” he said. “It looks pretty good but we are still in that cautious zone.”

A lot of hurry up and waiting

Kenny’s world turned upside down two years ago when he was 14.

In late March 2006, he felt like he had the flu. His doctor said he probably had some sort of virus and he needed to ride it out, his mother said.

A week passed and he was worse, not better. He had bruises that he figured came from soccer. He was out of breath and pale. They made another trip to the doctor where Kathy Conidaris asked for blood work.

Not necessary, she was told. Kenny probably had an ear or sinus infection, the doctor’s office said.

Four days went by. A bruise appeared on his upper leg “the size of my fist” and it bubbled to just below the skin surface, his mother said.

That night, she looked up “unexplained bruises” on the Internet. Web sites pointed to leukemia.

She didn’t say a word to anyone and called the doctor’s office the next morning, insisting on blood tests.

“I was livid,” she said.

The blood work was done and the family drove to HealthPark Medical Center, part of the Lee Memorial Health System in Lee County.

The hospital doctors said Kenny either had leukemia, aplastic anemia or a virus.

“I never heard of the word ‘leukemia,’” Kenny said.

“I was shocked, I was upset, I was mad,” his mother said.

The hospital had to hold off on a bone marrow biopsy until after he got blood transfusions. The diagnosis came back as severe aplastic anemia, where his bone marrow stopped making enough red and white blood cells and platelets.

The disease is rare, inflicting three out of every 1 million people in the U.S. every year.

The cause of aplastic anemia is unknown but medical scientists believe it is an inherited disorder in about 20 percent of patients, according to the National Marrow Donor Program.

For others, the disease may be caused by high doses of radiation or chemical exposure or may be an autoimmune disease where the body’s own immune system attacks the bone marrow.

The Conidaris family decided to seek treatment at Duke, where the best hope was a bone marrow match from any of his three sisters for a transplant. No luck there. A broader search on both sides of his parents’ family, involving 37 aunts, uncles, and cousins, didn’t find a match.

Doctors at Duke began an alternative of immunosuppressive therapy on Kenny while blood and bone marrow drives back home were being held.

Kenny’s grandfather, Robert Conidaris, owner of the Lani Kai Island Resort on Fort Myers Beach, hosted three blood and bone marrow drives at the resort in hopes of finding a bone marrow match and to help others needing blood transfusions.

“When Kenny first got sick, he lived off other people’s blood. He would have died,” his mother said.

Over the past two years, he’s had a dozen transfusions, along with the immunosuppressive therapy to weaken the body’s immune system to allow the bone marrow to make blood cells. For some, the therapy needs to be repeated and carries risks of other problems developing.

“I’ve probably had over 100 needle hooks,” Kenny said, referring to intravenous lines.

He’s decided he wants to go into some medical field when he grows up, but any surgical field is out.

“I can handle the blood part, just not the other stuff, the guts,” he said.

Not even the national bone marrow registry, with 7 million donors in the United States and another 4 million internationally, could find a perfect match for the Estero teen.

With his most recent trip to Duke when his blood counts were low, doctors recommended against immunosuppressive therapy again and were preparing to having Kenny’s father be the donor as a near match.

“At the last minute, Kenny’s bone marrow was looking good,” his mother said. “So here we are, two years later, the little mystery boy.”

For more information about the National Bone Marrow Registry, visit the Web site, www.marrow.org. To follow Kenny’s story, go the Web site, caringbridge.org and put in kennyconidaris11 at the name entry to visit his own Web page.