‘Be the Match’ donor event held in honor of UIUC student who passed away
‘For some people a bone marrow transplant is the cure, and they go on to live the rest of their lives as healthy individuals’
Be the Match, a bone marrow transplant organization, asks one simple question: Would you give up a few days of comfort if it meant you could save a life?
This afternoon Be the Match, in partnership with Blood Services of Illinois, set up shop in Illini Union room 104 and the Heritage Room in the ACES Library from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in order to register students for bone marrow donations. They will also accepted on-the-spot blood donations. The event is in memory of Jon Hustedt, a former UIUC student who died last year after complications with the bone marrow transplant he received to help with his aplastic anemia and paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH). He was 24.
“For some people a bone marrow transplant is the cure, and they go on to live the rest of their lives as healthy individuals,” Carrie Johnston, manager of marrow program for Be the Match, said. “For other people it buys them time. It may not be a forever cure for them, but it might buy them some extra time with their families.”
Carrie Johnston instructs a student to swab his cheek for registration
Along with her team, Johnston has planned this event for the past six months. Although they’ve had student bone marrow registration events for the past 25 years, this will be the first time the organization has held it in a students memory.
In order to register to be a bone marrow donor, students must swab their cheeks and give the samples back to the register. The process takes a few moments. Once registered, if their DNA matches with someone who needs a bone marrow transplant, they will be contacted to donate in the future.
The bone marrow donation process could involve surgery. Johnston said past events usually attract 20 to 25 people, but she’s confident more students will come to support Hustedt’s memory.
The registration event was held in room 104 in the Illini Union (above) and the Heritage Room in the ACES Library
“I think any time someone hears ‘surgery’ or ‘needle in bone,’ they are likely to have some fears” Johnston said. “We generally coach people by sharing the various statistics about the safety of the process, the general recovery time, we allow them the opportunity to speak to other people who have been through the process themselves.”
Sam Welch, senior in Journalism, was one of the first to register . She believes that the prospect of saving a life outweighs the physical discomfort from donating.
“Last summer at my internship we had this huge lunch conversation about donating, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to do it,’ because if I could save one person’s life just by having one day of pain or whatever that would be incredible,” Sam said.