Urangoo Baatarkhuyag cried when she got the latest news from her doctor.

The 24-year-old Mongolian woman who was diagnosed in September with acute myeloid leukemia has spent the last several weeks in LDS Hospital undergoing chemotherapy and the last week in the intensive care unit after pneumonia and infections made it almost impossible for her to breathe on her own.

She cried, though, because the doctors told her that if the biopsy she got on Wednesday showed all the cancer was gone, she could go home.

"When she was crying after that, she told her mom she never thought she was going to leave this hospital again, ever," her friend Otgonbayar Carter said.

If the cancer is gone, the biggest concern will be keeping her cancer-free. Baatarkhuyag almost certainly needs a bone marrow transplant to survive, her doctor told the Daily Herald in September. Without that transplant or at least additional chemotherapy, the cancer is almost sure to come back, and it could be soon.

The problem is those treatments cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Baatarkhuyag, who graduated from Utah Valley University this year, doesn't have insurance. The hospital can only do so much.

Her friends are picking up the rest, and they need help -- yours, specifically. The goal on their blog, SaveUVUgirl.com, is $350,000 for a transplant. Many have donated. A few have gone even further, planning fundraisers or passing the word on to their connections.

Artan Ismaili, a Brigham Young University student from Kosovo, said he feels a connection because they're both international, and because his wife, who just graduated from BYU, also doesn't have insurance, for the same reason Baatarkhuyag doesn't. He's never met the Mongolian woman; he got involved after a student in one of his classes asked people to go to the Web site and donate what they could.

He and his wife did that. But, he said, they didn't feel like that was enough. Baatarkhuyag's story affected them profoundly, he said. They started looking for other ways.

"Our money probably doesn't make a dent in what she needs, so I'm announcing it in my classes," he said.

That's not all. He approached a Mongolian restaurant in Utah County and asked about holding a fundraiser there. He's posted information to the blog site on all of his social networking sites. Since they're moving to Boston in January, they're selling what they have and donating the money to Baatarkhuyag's fund.

"I'm just hoping that someone will click," he said.

The Ismailis are just one part of a diverse group rallying behind Baatarkhuyag. Bryan McGowan, an Englishman who moved to the United States 20 years ago, met Baatarkhuyag a few times when he dated her friend. He's taken up her cause and tried all sorts of fundraisers and methods of help.

So far, though, he's getting nowhere, he said. He has attempted to contact the governor, senators and congressmen and heard nothing back. He's contacted local churches and charity organizations and tried to get help from national leukemia charities. So far, it's like getting through a brick wall, he said.

"I just keep thinking that even though we haven't been able to raise that much money for her, there's no way they're going to let her die in a U.S. hospital," he said.

Tushig Bataa of Orem, who is from Mongolia, knows Baatarkhuyag because the Mongolian community in Utah County is small. He organized a garage sale a couple of weeks ago and raised about $700 to donate to Baatarkhuyag.

"We all just kind of chipped in the best we can do," he said. "Hopefully she can pay some of her bills."

Patric Bates read on Facebook that a friend of his really wanted to help Baatarkhuyag. As president of Truth, Youth and Ecstasy, an art group at UVU, he had been looking for a humanitarian organization to help. This seemed like the perfect opportunity.

In conjunction with an art show at the UVU library, the group had a silent auction for some of the art. All of the money, which ended up at about $250, went to Baatarkhuyag.

"By the time the auction was about to close, I had made everybody aware that we were trying to raise money for her and fight leukemia," he said.

All of them expressed a sense of urgency.

"I think she's running out of time," Ismaili said.

• Heidi Toth can be reached at (801) 344-2556 or htoth@heraldextra.com.

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