Bone Marrow Brothers

In late April my husband Tony received a call from our friend Kathy in Ohio. Bill, her husband, was about to celebrate a milestone birthday, his 50th, and had hoped Tony could send a special greeting from St. Louis. Instead, my husband surprised Bill by making the trip out to see him over his birthday weekend. The fact was this was not just any milestone birthday; this was one that almost wasn't meant to be.

Eight years earlier Bill had Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and his last hope for survival was a bone marrow donation. His three brothers were the best hope for a match. Despite a 25 percent chance, none of them qualified. Bill was out of options and at the mercy of finding a donor through the National Marrow Registry.  Because he had registered through his employer about seven years earlier, my husband Tony became that hope.

And after long, step-by-step process, Tony was found to be a match 'closer than a brother', more perfect than the hospital and National Registry had ever dreamed possible. Bill not only went into remission, but he is healthy and living a life he feared would come to an end only years earlier.

Doctors look for a donor who matches their patient's tissue type, specifically their human leukocyte antigen (HLA) tissue type. Your immune system uses these markers to decipher between good and bad cells. The closer the match between the patient's HLA markers and yours, the better for the patient. The intent is to replace the 'bad' marrow with 'good' marrow.

Have you ever considered registering to become a donor? Since there are few area registration drives, the simplest way would be to go to this link. It registers you with the National Marrow organization. 

According to the National Registry, approximately one in every 540 members will be a match and have the opportunity to donate  You may never be identified as a match for someone needing a transplant or you may find that your HLA tissue type is more common and you are potentially a more universal match.  By registering, you are NOT committing yourself to donating if you are a match. You always have the option to 'opt-out' if you were asked.

There are actually two types of donation methods. The first is a surgical procedure done under general or regional anesthesia that withdrawals liquid marrow using needle punctures from the back of the pelvic bone. Since my husband was donating for a man in similar stature to his own, he donated the maximum amount, which amounted to about 50 punctures in all. If donating for a child or a smaller stature woman or male, less marrow is needed and the procedure is less involved.

Peripheral blood stem cell donation is a non-surgical procedure done in an outpatient clinic. Through a process called apheresis, a donor's blood is removed through a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells. The remaining blood is returned to the donor through the other arm. In addition to donating marrow, my husband has donated apheresis numerous times through the American Red Cross. Instead of donating whole blood, they considered him a perfect candidate for this procedure, which can take several hours.  There was no particular recipient in mind with each of these donations, but it is held at a blood bank until needed. It is my understanding that not everyone would be a good candidate to donate the peripheral stem cells.

Tony would be the first to say that donating the bone marrow for this complete stranger changed his life forever. After Bill's amazing recovery and mutual agreement to learn of each other's identites after the mandatory one year waiting period passed, they became best friends. Actually, they are more than that. With Tony's marrow coarsing through Bill's blood, they share the same DNA. They are closer than friends: They are brothers. Blood brothers.