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You can register for a bone marrow match program and possibly save a life.
Scott & White Healthcare in association with Loupots bookstore is conducting a Bone Marrow registry drive today through Saturday at the Loupots location at 308 George Bush Drive.
The event is meant to bring awareness to the match registry program and offer information on how easy it is to get swabbed and possibly save a life, said Loupots Bookstores Projects Director Suanne Pledger.
Nearly 10,000 patients exist whose hope for survival is a transplant, Pledger said, and about 6,000 are searching for donors through the registry at any given time- only four out of 10 receive the transplant they need.
Donors will experience no pain when they register, Pledger said. Potential donors need to be between the ages of 18 and 60, in good general health, with valid identification and a permanent address. After consent forms are signed, cheeks will be swabbed to check for possible bone marrow matches.
These patients are suffering from life threatening diseases like leukemia and lymphoma, childhood diseases where bone marrow donations can help save and extend many lives, said Scott & White Marrow Program Supervisor Luke Potts.
"It's been amazing to see how many Aggies are willing to donate," Potts said. "This shows the Aggie Spirit and how it is a chance for the Twelfth Man to step off the bench and help the human race by saving lives."
Student Body President Kolin Loveless said the bone marrow registry program is a good opportunity for Aggies to show support.
"This is what separates Texas A&M from other universities," Loveless said. "It is the fact that we give back."
Pledger said 70 percent of patients don't have a match with a family member, and so they rely on the registry system.
"People think that it is not going to happen to them, but when someone in the family suffers, they realize it," she said.
Misconceptions are that the process for donating marrow is painful, Potts said, but most of the transplants done are similar to plasma platelets donations.
In the process called aphereis, the donor is given a protein called filgrastim, to generate more stem cells, each day for five days. Then, the donor's blood cells are collected by a sterile tube, which passes through an apheresis machine that separates out the stem cells. The remaining blood, without the stem cells, is returned to the donor in another sterile tube placed into the other arm.
"The patient does not lose any blood," Potts said.
The alternate way to donate is through the marrow collection, where the donor is scheduled for day surgery. General anesthesia is given so the donor experiences no pain. The marrow is collected through placing a needle on the iliac crest of the pelvic bone. The marrow rejuvenates itself in four to six weeks in each process.
"It can be uncomfortable but it is not painful," he said. "Hollywood has dramatized it to that effect. People believe in what they see [in movies]."
Potts said the discomfort experienced in surgical donation is nothing compared to that of radiation and chemotherapy that the patients go through.
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