Anissa Ayala and her little sister, Marissa Eve, walk down the aisle this evening as bride and flower girl, one year after a bone marrow transplant to which both owe their lives.
Marissa, now 21/2, was conceived to donate marrow to her big sister, who suffered from a deadly form of leukemia."Four years ago, things looked so gloomy, and now Anissa's doing great," her father, Abe Ayala, said on the eve of the wedding. "We're being so rewarded. It's amazing."
Anissa, 20, and Bryan Espinosa, 25, are to marry before 350 guests at a Victorian mansion in this city 50 miles east of Los Angeles.
Although Anissa remains a bit weak, she has been putting in long hours with her mother and future mother-in-law on the wedding, Ayala said. She resumed working, at a bank, about three months ago.
"She's even having a hard time sleeping at night, she's so excited," he said.
Dr. Rudolf Brutoco, Anissa's doctor, said she showed no trace of leukemia and is "recovering at an excellent rate."
He described Marissa, whose part in the operation was virtually risk-free, as a precocious and healthy toddler. Ayala described her as "a little angel."
"We couldn't ask for any child more beautiful," Ayala said. "She's a miracle."
Ayala, 48, and his wife, Mary, 45, decided to try to have a child to provide a bone marrow match for Anissa after extensive efforts to find a donor failed. Anissa's disease, chronic myelogenous leukemia, is fatal in 80 percent to 90 percent of cases without a transplant.
Some medical experts questioned the ethics of producing a child as a utility measure, even to save another child's life. And there was no guarantee that Marissa, born in April 1990, would be a donor match.
The couple also has a son, 21-year-old Airon.
The City of Hope National Medical Center, which performed the transplant on June 4, 1991, calculates the odds of a cure at 80 percent for a patient under age 20.