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EVENT: Bone Marrow Registry and Blood Drive sponsored by Carter BloodCare and the National Marrow Donor Program
DAY/DATE: Sun., March 2
TIME/PLACE: 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. located at Trinity Presbyterian Church, 5500 Morriss Rd., Flower Mound, TX 75028 FEE/COST: This is a free service. CONTACT PERSON/PHONE: For more information or to request a donation time slot, please contact the church office at 972/539-0514 or admin@tpcfm.org. DESCRIPTION OF EVENT: Trinity Presbyterian Church of Flower Mound offers a regular quarterly blood drive, but is adding a special marrow registry drive this Sunday in honor of one of its members, Doug Campbell. Doug, an elder at Trinity, is a non-Hodgkins lymphoma patient whose doctors are currently searching for a marrow donor match. If a match is found, Doug will have the option of having a bone marrow transplant in the hopes it will be the cure to his currently incurable lymphoma. Doug has battled this disease for over 8 years and is coming to the end of proven treatment options. He has three children, ages 6, 9 and 11, and a wife of over 12 years battling with him. The church is opening these drives to anyone in the community willing to give the gift of life to someone.According to the National Marrow Donor Program website, www.marrow.org, anyone, age 18 – 60, who meets the health guidelines and is committed to helping any patient in need may join. First, you complete a short health questionnaire and sign a form stating you understand what being on the Registry means. Then, you give a swab of your cheek cells to be tested for your tissue type. This information is added to the Registry.
Bone marrow donation in the past has been known as a painful procedure. However, new methods of collection have made that process much less daunting for the donor. The majority of marrow donations do not involve surgery. The patient's doctor most commonly requests a peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donation, which is non-surgical and outpatient. If marrow is requested, it is a surgical procedure, usually outpatient.
PBSC donation takes place at an apheresis center. To increase the number of blood-forming cells in the bloodstream, the donor receives daily injections of a drug called filgrastim for five days before the collection. The donor’s blood is then removed through a sterile needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells. This process is similar to donating plasma. The remaining blood is returned to the donor.
