Gift of Life Bone Marrow Drive sponsored by Hillel

Heather Ross
January 2010

        My name is Heather Ross, a fifth year student here at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. With the help of my fellow Hillel members, I am organizing a Gift of Life Bone Marrow Drive. It will be held Monday, February 15, 2010 from 9AM to 12PM and Tuesday, February 16, 2010 from 12PM to 4:30PM.  At the college in the student development lounge in the upper G wing.  You may be asking yourself, what is a bone marrow drive?

        Before the Gift of Life was ever founded, Jay Feinberg was diagnosed with leukemia in 1991. He was told that his only hope for survival was a bone marrow transplant. After testing every possible family member and friend and not finding a match, Jay turned to the international registries, but was unlucky there as well. Jay, his family, and his friends launched a four-year campaign hoping to find a match, testing 60,000 volunteers at hundreds of drives all over the U.S.

       Finally in 1995, after finding out his disease had accelerated, Jay was about to try his luck at a risky transplant from a mismatched donor, when his miracle match was found! Following his successful transplant, Jay decided to keep up the effort he and thousands of others had already started and founded the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation. The Gift of Life is a member of the World Marrow Donor Association, and as they say, the rest is history.

       The next question that may be crossing your mind is, what exactly is required of you to do at a bone marrow drive? It’s extremely simple. You show up, fill in a consent form, answer a few medical questions to make sure you are able to donate, and then swab the inside of your cheek with a few cotton swabs. Easy as pie! The volunteers working the drive do the rest as far as labeling your swabs with the correct bar code and making sure it gets packaged. Once the drive is through, all of the packaged swabs get mailed to a lab where they your DNA is entered into the bone marrow registry.

       What happens after that is completely up to you. Should the foundation find someone you potentially match, they will contact you and inquire as to whether you would be up to doing further testing. If you agree to keep the process going, the next step would be to have some blood drawn. Despite the numerous amount of people who are sick, and the many people who come out to register as a possible donor, the chances of being a match is generally one in 100. The rarer your blood type, the higher chance you have of matching someone.

      We are simply trying to help Gift of Life expand their donor registry. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at stk36023@go.stockton.edu and I can gladly and willingly answer any concerns you may have.
 
I hope to see you all there!
Heather Ross
Hillel Coordinator of Community Service