Looking For Her Parents

Michelle Robertson, a 32-year-old wife and mother, has been fighting Hodgkin's disease since 1991 and needs a bone marrow transplant to survive.

However, Robertson is adopted and has not been able to find her biological family.

CBS News Correspondent Russ Mitchell spoke to Robertson and her doctor about her prognosis and the benefits of finding a family member to donate a bone marrow.

Little is known about Robertson's biological family. Her adoptive parents know that she was the fifth child of a family named Crane who gave her up for adoption through a Christian organization in Rochester, N.Y., where she was born.

"I do know my father's full name. His name is Paul Crane. I know that I do believe they were divorced when my mother was pregnant with me. That's why I was put up for adoption," says Robertson.

Thus far, Robertson is in the process of getting New York State to open her adoption records, and she is also trying to find her lost siblings.

If she finds a donor, doctors can give her lethal doses of chemotherapy that will destroy her diseased bone marrow and transplant the healthy marrow.

Dr. Ann Wierman explains that there is a high risk of dying from a bone marrow transplant itself.

"When you use someone not related, you have more side effects, and the mortality associated with the transplant is towards 40 percent."

That's why Dr. Wierman says it is very important to find a matched-related-donor (family member).

Nevertheless, Robertson is keeping a positive outlook. "I'm a fighter," she says. "I'm not going anywhere. I don't plan on going anywhere. If something is going to kill me, it's going to be something else."

CBS News Correspondent Russ Mitchell