The Story
Swab A Cheek, Save a Life: the Bone Marrow Drive
After a year of planning, William and Mary’s Bone Marrow Drive’s main event, the 19th annual Drive Day, arrived on April 14 in the Tidewater rooms of the Sadler Center. The Drive began in 1991 and was continued by Jay Bukzin to try to find a match for his brother Alan, for whom the drive is now done in memoriam.
The drive was an all-day event, beginning at 9 a.m. and ending at 8 p.m., and involved the help of over 60 volunteers to add 573 people to the National Registry. Work for the drive started much earlier and involved more than just swabbing cheeks.
“[Work began] the day after last year’s drive,” said Drive Chair Shannon More (’10), “It’s a year long process.”
The reasons for the lengthy process become clear when you realize Drive Day doesn’t just involve the logistical planning for the day.
“We have to fundraise all year so that everyone can enter for free on campus,” said More. “It costs $26 to enter someone into the registry so to enter 500 people costs $13,000. To raise money, we hold the Parents’ Weekend 5K, an annual golf tournament at the Golden Horseshoe, a silent auction, the Charter Day Gala, wMTV, and, the campus favorite, Mr. William and Mary.”
BMD also faces the challenge of getting people to participate.
“We also focus on raising awareness about what the BMD is because one of our greatest challenges is dispelling the myths about registration and marrow donation,” said More.
One such myth is the way in which marrow is transplanted. While the old process involved a surgery taking marrow from the donor’s hip, a new process is used more and more now.
“The newer method is a PBSC [peripheral blood stem cell] donation where stem cells are removed from your blood and then your blood is put back into your body,” said More.
“It’s a lot less invasive and scary,” said Aileen Alyward (’10), BMD’s Community Outreach Chair, comparing the new method to getting blood drawn.
Unfortunately, the process is still new and BMD has to break through the idea that donating bone marrow is painful (although the medicine given to prepare a donor in the new method creates flu-like symptoms), daunting and scary.
“Donating is not as painful as in movies like Seven Pounds,” said More. “Movies like this are completely detrimental to the bone marrow registry as they perpetuate incorrect stereotypes about the process and turn people off from registering.”
These existing stereotypes didn’t stop over 500 people from joining the registry on Drive Day. Participants seemed to have no qualms about potentially donating their bone marrow and gave a variety of reasons for coming out to the Drive.
“We’ve been hearing about it all year because the girls in our sorority are really involved,” said Meg MacIver (’13), who was registering and volunteering.
Similarly, Freshmen Austin Yager and Justin Loeb were participating because of their fraternity. This encouragement probably had something to do with a competition the BMD held to get more people to register.
“It was a competition between freshman halls, Greek organizations, and sports teams to see which group in each category brought out the most people to register,” said Jennifer Grenga (’11), BMD’s Campus Events Co-Chair. “I believe the prize is going to be a tab.”
However, it wasn’t just those affiliated with campus groups who decided to register.
“Service is really important to me … and to think that giving a few minutes of my time could somewhere down the road lead to helping someone is wonderful,” said Noah Kim (’13).
Others had much more personal reasons for participating.
“I have a brother-in-law who’s been battling cancer so we’re just trying to pass on to others if we can,” said Carla Pinto, a resident of Williamsburg who heard about the drive from the Red Cross website.
Just as not all participants in the drive were students, the volunteers also included non-students. Debroah Watts and Rosa Carlos were two such volunteers, who were very personally affected by the cause.
“I just lost my son a month ago,” said Carlos. “He had CLL [chronic lymphocytic leukemia] and he had a bone marrow transplant. This is my way of saving a mother from going through what I went through.”
Carlos’s son, Terry Carlos, was married to an employee of The College, Cherice Carlos. Carlos and her family and friends started their own bone marrow drive for her son, which they plan to continue.
“We plan to hold another drive this summer in Hampton,” said Watts, “around August 14. We don’t have the place yet.”
Although you may not have heard about it, students at The College have been matches or potential matches, including Amanda Bergen (’09), Evan Brown (’09) and Laura Elton (’10).
“Last year, they actually called me because they found a 49-year-old woman who was a potential match,” said Elton. “It actually made me really think about what it meant to be a donor… and it’s actually a real decision to me now.”
After further testing, Elton turned out not to be a match, but Bergen and Brown did end up donating.
“Laura’s the rare case,” said Alyward. “15,000 people have registered [at William and Mary] and they’ve matched 100 people.”
If you missed your opportunity to donate or still want to help, never fear! BMD will be holding another drive in Williamsburg on April 25.