The tender and the tough

John Bucci Jr. was doing his best to make the last hours count at his family's South Philadelphia luncheonette, John's Roast Pork - preparing it for several months without him.

On Monday, he taught his 20-year-old niece, Bethany Messick (known as "Boo"), the secret recipe for the family's legendary Italian roast pork. John's has become the city's premier destination for cheesesteaks in recent years, but he reminded her: That garlicky fourth-generation pork is still its best sandwich.

On Tuesday, he deboned and seasoned 18 picnic hams - a get-ahead effort that made his shoulder throb with pain. By Wednesday, his last day, the lunch line was out the door. But Bucci was in the zone, cranking out 16 steak sandwiches from his little griddle every five minutes with an uncommon precision and grace, searing, seasoning, ribbon-shredding, and tucking each order into its crusty roll as if it were a precious work of art.

You'd never know Bucci, 42, was dangerously sick from preleukemia by watching him at this grill - and it's a cruel irony. At the apex of his success, he was about to leave the luncheonette for a bone-marrow transplant. Without it, he would soon die, his doctor said. A successful procedure would improve his odds for long-term recovery to 50 percent.

"I just want to come to work," he said, his voice cracking. "All I want to do is just make a cheesesteak."

Bucci was at Jeanes Hospital early Thursday morning, getting a catheter in his chest. A powerful chemotherapy drug called busulfan will start to flow on Tuesday in preparation for the transplant, scheduled for June 6.

Two perfect anonymous matches had been found through the National Marrow Donor Program, said Bucci's doctor, Thomas Klumpp, assistant director of the Temple Bone Marrow Transplant Program. But the multistage process, which Klumpp called among the most dangerous procedures in medicine outside of trauma surgery, was fraught with possible pitfalls.

For a patient in Bucci's condition, Klumpp said, 20 percent will not survive the transplant, 10 percent will survive the transplant but have a fatal relapse of leukemia, and 20 percent will survive but have a chronic debilitating disease. "I'd estimate about a 50-50 chance for long-term success," the doctor said.