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Bone marrow program gives Airmen opportunities to save a life

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Stefanie Torres
  • 386th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA --  Airmen from the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing will be given a chance to make a difference in someone's life Sept. 14 during a health fair at the Flex here.

With just a swab of a cheek, Airmen can register with the C.W. Bill Young Department of Defense Marrow Donor Program and save a life by being a bone marrow donor, said Capt. Stacey Brundrett, nurse manager at the 386th Expeditionary Medical Group.

"There is no blood involved because this is just a registry process," Captain Brundrett said. "We will swab the inside of your cheek and put you in their database. It is 100 percent voluntary, and if anyone here is a potential match for a patient, he or she still has choices."

Bone marrow transplants are used to treat patients who are unable to produce their own healthy marrow because of chemotherapy or certain types of cancers like leukemia or lymphoma. The healthy marrow helps boost a patient's immune system enough to fight off the cancer and possibly save or prolong the recipient's life.

"The patient and donor don't even have to be the same blood type," Captain Brundrett explained. "Giving a patient bone marrow may also eliminate the need for chemotherapy."

Once registered as a donor, medical teams throughout the U.S. search for potential matches. Once a potential match is found, other diagnostic tests are performed to ensure the donor is the right one for the patient. During the process, donors are also given the option to decline if they feel they don't want to go through with it anymore.
"A great part about this process is that once someone is registered in the system and they receive a call about being a potential match, they still have the option to accept or decline to donate," Captain Brundett said.

Maj. Donna Hornberger, chief nurse for the 386th EMDG, is familiar with the process because her husband donated bone marrow 10 years ago to a 25 year-old with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

"He registered in May and was called in August," she said. "They flew me and my husband to Washington, D.C., where we stayed by the hospital. They also paid for my parents to come out and watch our children."

When her husband woke from general anesthesia, Major Hornberger found that the marrow was already en route -- along with the card and a bracelet they made of beads that signified good health.

After being released from the hospital, they were able to tour the state capital and depart for home. But it was not the last time the couple would hear from the recipient.

"We received a card a couple of months later via the registry center," she said. "(The donor) said how appreciative he was of my husband's gift of life. He started gaining some of his weight back after the procedure, and he had one of the nurses help make his bracelet bigger."

A year later, Major Hornberger and her husband were able to meet the recipient face-to-face. However, the chemotherapy he received while waiting for a donor took a toll on his body and he developed liver cancer.

"We did find out that in the year before he was diagnosed with cancer that he was able to get out of the hospital and get married," she said. "My husband and I both wonder if he would have been on the registry just a year earlier if it would have extended his life even longer, but we receive comfort in knowing that his donation provided him a little more time he otherwise would not have had."