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Finally, some good news for Kailee Wells.

Blood counts for the former Albuquerque girl battling a rare blood disease are in the normal range nearly three months after her third and, her mother says, last-chance marrow transplant.

"To the best of my recollection, this is the first time she has achieved normal without the aid of blood transfusions since this disease hit her more than five years ago," her mother, Linda Wells, said in an e-mail Friday.

In addition to near-perfect red blood hemoglobin and hematocrit levels, Wells said that tests last week indicate that Kailee's white blood cell count is approaching normal and could be so in a week.

Wells said she, husband Owen and Kailee's doctors are "cautiously optimistic" that the third-time transfusion is the charm that will bring the 10-year-old the normal life she has always wished for.

Kailee has spent half of her life fighting very severe aplastic anemia, a disease in which bone marrow cannot produce enough red blood cells.

Kailee underwent a first transplant using cells that were not a perfect match because no perfect donor match could be found, despite her parents search around the globe. Twice that search took Linda Wells to China, Kailee's birthplace and the place where she was adopted by the Wells as an infant.

A second transplant took place Nov. 7, 2005, after that elusive perfect donor - a physician from China whom the Wellses call their miracle man - was found.

Doctors had even pronounced Kailee anemia free after that, but the blood counts dropped again, likely because of a virus she caught that damaged her marrow, Linda Wells said.

Kailee's third transplant took place Feb. 3. At the time, Linda Wells explained that should the transplant not take there would be nothing more to try. Their perfect match would no longer be able to donate his marrow because Chinese policy allows only three attempts.

The transplants have taken place at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, where the family now lives.

With their daughter on the mend, the Wellses are turning their attention once again to others across the country in search of their own perfect donor.

The Fifth Annual Thanks Mom Bone Marrow Donor Drive, inspired by the Wellses in conjunction with the National Marrow Donor Program, solicits potential marrow donors to come forward to be typed and placed on the national registry.

The drive, which begins next month, has a goal of adding 20,000 potential donors to the registry - up from the 6,018 added last year, Linda Wells said.

This year's drive, spearheaded by Owen Wells, will be held in 240 cities across 42 states, including Albuquerque, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.