Bone marrow registration drive adds donors, raises awareness

When Bigfork art teacher Sarah Taylor found out last spring that her sister had been diagnosed with two forms of leukemia, she had no idea how difficult it would be to find a matching donor for a bone marrow transplant.

“You would think that with all of the millions of people on Earth, there would be a match, but it’s not that easy,” Taylor said.

Although her sister — who lives in Milwaukee and recently began her seventh round of chemotherapy — is currently in remission, Taylor said her best chance for long-term survival is to undergo a bone marrow transplant.

With no matches in the family or the entire national registry, Taylor felt compelled to do something to help raise awareness and possibly save the life of her sister or another patient in need of a transplant.

“Everyone seems to pay a lot of attention to things like breast cancer and heart attacks and stroke, but there are so many other things out there that need attention too,” Taylor said.

Through the National Marrow Donor Program, Taylor organized the bone marrow donor registration drive that was held last Friday in Bigfork.

By the end of the drive, which was held from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the high school foyer, about 50 names and tissue samples had been added to the pool of potential donors.

It might seem like a drop in the bucket considering thousands of patients are currently awaiting transplants, but according to National Marrow Donor Program special recruitment representative Eileen Damone, adding just one more person to the registry could mean the difference between life and death for a patient in need.

“This is the last chance for many people,” Damone said. “People always think that they will match their kid or sibling, but that rarely happens. There is only a 25 to 30 percent chance that you will match (a family member).”

According to Damone, it is much more difficult to match tissue types than it is to match blood types.

“For bone marrow transplants, the standard of match is way higher than blood,” Damone said. “Blood matches cross racial boundaries, but tissue often does not. You’ll usually find a match with people who are most like you.”

To be entered into the registry, potential donors must fill out a health history form and submit a swab of cheek tissue cells. There is no cost to join, although donations are accepted.

“This would be the first step, being entered into the pool of potential donors,” Damone said. “Your name goes into the database, and if you match with a patient, then we would get in touch (with you).”

If selected as a match, donors are contacted and asked to undergo more extensive testing.

The final step is extraction, which can be done both surgically and non-surgically. The non-surgical procedure is the most common.

Although donors may experience some soreness and discomfort following the extraction procedure, most are back to their normal routines within a few days.

“Donation is not the terrible nightmare that is the popular perception,” Damone said. “In a few days, you’ll be back to normal, and you’ve just saved a life.”

For that reason, Taylor said that all the work that went into organizing the registration drive was definitely worth it.

“Even though the chances are small that we’ll find a match for my sister in one of these people, maybe we can save the life of someone else’s sister, brother or parent,” she said.

For more information or to sign up for the donor registry, call 1-800-627-7692 or visit bethematch.org and click on “Get Involved.”