June 25, 2013 – Two decades ago, when Coos Bay Democratic Rep. Caddy McKeown served on the Coos Bay School Board, a high school student had leukemia, spurring a drive to register people to become bone marrow donors.
McKeown said years later, at least one person was called to donate, saving a 7-year-old boy’s life in the Midwest.
A baby girl born in Coos Bay with aplastic anemia inspired the freshman legislator to organize a born marrow registration at the Capitol.
Aplastic anemia is a disorder in which bone marrow — the sponge like tissue inside our bones — doesn’t produce enough new blood cells. The rare but serious disorder gets worse over time, but can be successfully treated, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Baby Evelyn, in Coos Bay, has waited seven weeks for a donation. She has a brother, but his bone marrow didn’t match.
“She has abnormally low blood platelet levels,” said Meliah Masiba, an intern in McKeown’s office. “The best hope for her is a bone marrow transfusion.”
It’s very unlikely that a match would be produced from the Capitol registration drive to help Baby Evelyn, but an accumulation of drives across the country increases the chances for her and others.
“The odds get better and better the more people sign up,” McKeown said. “We have a group of young people in this building. I thought that may be a chance to build the registry.”
McKeown’s goal was to net 30 new registrants, but she doubled her goal last week at the Capitol, as the bipartisan, bicameral drive registered 60 new people, including a representative of The Lund Report.
Registering to become a bone marrow donor is easier and quicker than in the past. Whereas registrants were once asked to give a vial of blood, a cheek swab will now do.
In just a few short minutes, I filled out some basic paperwork, and then gave samples of my epithelial cells, which are enough to determine if I could be someone’s match.
Masiba handed me four Q-tips, which I used to swab the four corners of my mouth. The entire process took less than 10 minutes, not counting time I took to grill the drive leaders with questions.
“Every year, more than 12,000 people are diagnosed with life-threatening diseases like leukemia or lymphoma and the only chance is a donor outside of their family,” said Magda Silva, who supervised the drive for Be the Match, which keeps the registry of potential bone marrow donors.
Silva said only one in 540 people who register will be called in their lifetime to donate bone marrow, but when they are, the typical donation is much less invasive than in the past.
Although one-quarter of donors give through a surgical procedure in which liquid bone marrow is extracted from the pelvis, most donate by giving a transfusion of peripheral blood stem cells, which is comparable to dialysis and not much more intensive than a routine blood donation to groups such as the Red Cross.
Donors are injected with a drug for several days that increases blood-forming cells and then blood is removed from one arm, passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells and then returns the rest of the blood to the body through the other arm.
Silva said donations from racial minorities and people of mixed race were especially in demand. One illness in particular that bone marrow donations can help, sickle-cell anemia, predominately affects people of African ancestry.
People can join the registry from the ages of 18 to 44 and remain registered until they are 61. Registrants agree to further testing if called as well as commit to donate to any patient if they are the best match.
Be the Match has registration drives regularly and operate locally from an office in Northwest Portland. Go to www.marrow.org for more information. If people cannot attend drives, they can also register with the organization by sending their cell samples through the mail. Sign up online.
Another drive for Baby Evelyn will take place June 29 in Coquille.
Image for this story by Jacob Johan (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) via Flickr.
Christopher David Gray can be reached at [email protected].
