Going the extra mile

Andrew Glazer

He’ll walk thousands of miles, climb mountains and cross deserts for his

little brother. Literally.

“My body’s going to take a beating,” said 26-year-old Costa Mesa resident

Tony DiLorenzo, an avid hiker.

“But I’ll be focusing on why I’m doing this. It’s not personal anymore.”

DiLorenzo will be walking up the Pacific Crest Trail -- a hike that will

take him more than four months to complete -- to raise money and

awareness to fight thalassemia, a rare and fatal inherited blood disease.

His younger brother, Paul DiLorenzo, was diagnosed with the disease when

he was just a year old.

Those suffering from thalassemia have an irregular amount of red blood

cells -- cells that carry oxygen throughout the body.

Without medication and regular blood transfusions, severe thalassemia

sufferers usually die in their teens, said Dr. Thomas Coates, director of

L.A. Childrens Hospital’s thalassemia department.

However, treated thalassemia patients may live into their 50s, Coates

said.

Paul DiLorenzo, a sophomore at UC Riverside, undergoes blood transfusions

every four weeks. Until recently, he stuck an IV needle into his leg that

fed him medicine overnight. Doctors have since changed his treatment to a

single 72-hour dose once a week.

The drug, Desferal, helps control the amount of toxic iron pumped into

his body from his blood transfusions. Without the medication, Paul’s

liver would stop working.

It wasn’t always easy to convince him to stick the long needle into his

leg for 10 hours a day.

“When I was a kid, I’d be running around my house trying to get away from

my parents and brother,” Paul said. “They would have to hold me down.”

“It still chokes me up,” said Tony DiLorenzo. “I really want to give back

to my brother.”

With his hike, which will take him through California, Oregon and

Washington, DiLorenzo hopes to raise $20,000 for doctors researching

thalassemia.

Sponsors can log onto his Web site -- o7

www.7000000steps.homepage.comf7 -- to make a donation and to monitor

his progress.

His wife, Alisa DiLorenzo, will post “virtual postcards” detailing his

position along the way. She will also visit her husband at several stops

in California.

She said she will miss her husband, “but there’s no way I’m going to

stand in the way of his dreams.”

Alisa DiLorenzo is president of the California chapter of Cooley’s Anemia

Foundation, a group dedicated to bringing thalassemia patients together.

A portion of the money DiLorenzo raises will go to the foundation.

“We really need support from each other,” said Paul, who studies computer

science. “You talk to other people and they kind of know what you’re

going through. But when you meet other patients, it’s a very uplifting

experience. You can ask them ‘what do you do to get through the

depression? How does it make you feel?”’

Tony DiLorenzo will begin his journey at the end of April. He’ll carry

with him a 13-pound backpack, filled with clothes, a blanket, sleeping

pad, first-aid kit and a flashlight. But DiLorenzo said his drive to

complete the 2,600-mile hike will lighten his burden.

“I won’t let my brother down,” he said.