Cancer awareness close to home

I received the following email this morning:

Ronald D. Roach,

Your response is critical!

You have been identified as a possible match for a patient in need of a
life-saving marrow or blood stem cell transplant.  When you joined the
National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) Registry (on December 29, 1991)
through your local donor center you were told that at any time you could
be asked to consider additional testing for a patient with a life
threatening disease.

If you are interested in participating in the DR stage of testing that
has been requested of you, please complete the attached Donor Health
History Screening Questionnaire (HHQ) and return it to me by either mail
or fax.

Once your HHQ is received and reviewed I will contact you to discuss
scheduling your blood sample collection.  After your DR sample is
collected, it will take about 60 days for us to get the results.  We
would then notify you by either a letter or a telephone call to let you
know where you are in matching the potential recipient.  In the
meantime, you may find it helpful to visit our website (www.marrow.org)
to obtain additional information regarding the testing and collection
processes.

Thank you for your continued support of the NMDP.  *Please let me know
if you have any questions or if you are no longer interested in
participating with the Registry*.  I look forward to hearing from you!

My father passed away from a rare form of leukemia when I was in high school.  It was a tough experience dealing with the brutality of leukemia.  At the time of his illness, they could not find an acceptable bone marrow donor.   The doctors thought a bone marrow transplant might have prolonged his life.  From diagnosis to death was a short 18 months.

I started regularly donating blood after I graduated from college.  I read a brochure while donating (you are considered a captive audience with a needle stuck in your arm) about donating platelets to help cancer patients and decided that was for me.  I scheduled an appointment with the apheresis center in downtown Norfolk and the following week I got a call.  My blood type had closely matched a cancer patient that needed platelets so I became a weekly donor for a few months.   I was never given the specifics about the patient I was supporting.  All I do know is that the urgent requests ended about six months after I started donating.   

The Red Cross added my information to the National Marrow Donor Program in case I was found to be a potential match with other cancer patients that needed a bone marrow transplant.  In order to keep costs low, they check your tissue and blood type for the first four of six levels.  If you are found to be a match on the first four, they then check the remaining two to see if you are an acceptable donor.

I spoke with the  search specialist from the Bone Marrow Donor Program this afternoon and will be tested on the final two levels Monday morning.  They can share a few of the details about the patient- he is 45 years old with leukemia.  It was not an urgent request so he might have just been diagnosed.  That is all I will ever know.  He is close to my age and I can't help but wonder - how is this disease affecting his life, does he have a wife, does he have children?  How will the diagnosis of cancer roller coaster forever change their lives?  I hope that I am found to be a perfect match.

Yesterday, The Outer Banks Republic posted about a new study that reports breast cancer genes can be passed to daughters through their father.  I wonder if cancer has affected someone in his family.  More than likely it has.

If cancer has not already touched your life or the life of someone you know, consider yourself lucky.  Do your part - know your family history, get regular checkups and sign up to be a potential donor.  You could help save someone's life.

Comments

[Tony Gallegos]

Ronnie,

Appreciated your post. I too have several family members that have been touched by cancer.

Thanks for sharing,

Tony

[Rachel K.]

Hey, this is a little late, but I just stumbled upon your blog this evening (avid OBX'er, hoping to move there) and this post in particular really touched my heart. Being involved in the cancer world with the hopes of one day becoming a child life specialist I've come to realize just how important bone marrow donors truly are. It is so often the only possible hope of life and it's so rare to find a perfect match. The more people who sign up to be on that list the more likely it will become. It's so easy (like you said) and though I was afraid when I first heard about donation long before I got involved in the lives of these individuals, now I know that it's absolutely nothing compared to what they endure every single day. In fact, even the painful part seems easy now.
I will pray for that man and for you.
Hopefully he will find someone, maybe even you, to be that match for him.