Bloom and grow: the opportunity to change a life

by Harper Daire

As a full-time college student, you get pretty used to people asking you to sign up for things. Most often, those things are classes (or clubs, or jobs, or trips, or any of the other thousand things that make up a college student’s schedule). However, about two years ago, I had the chance to sign up for an opportunity that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would change both my own and someone else’s life. 

I was walking through my college’s campus center on the way to lunch when I spotted a table sponsored by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). As I learned that day, NMDP is a nationwide donor registry that genetically matches volunteer donors with potential recipients in need of life-saving blood marrow or stem cell transplants. Not expecting much to come of it, I swabbed the inside of my cheek and joined the registry myself. 

A year and a half later, I received a call from NMDP informing me that, in a one in 14 million chance, I had been identified as a potential match for a gentleman with a rare form of blood cancer. This came as a complete surprise, as 1.5 years is an extremely fast turnaround to be identified as a match within a registry so expansive. Over the next few weeks, I spoke to representatives from NMDP who led me through the potential timeline, risks, and physical requirements of the stem cell donation process. As I got deeper into the matching process, the investment required progressed from phone calls to questionnaires to physical tests and finally to blood samples. I was repeatedly given chances to opt out of the match that had been identified for me, but each further step in the process only increased my resolve to see it through.

In September of 2024, about two months after I was initially contacted by NMDP, I was informed that the patient I’d matched with was no longer pursuing a stem cell transplant. I remember my overwhelming reaction to that was disappointment – I’d begun to build this opportunity up in my mind as an amazing chance to make a difference in someone’s life, and it was so rare to even be contacted in the first place, and I’d already given these people so much of my blood just for testing! and – it just felt strange to have all that end so suddenly. 

To my surprise, in mid-December, I was contacted by NMDP and informed that I was in fact the only potential donor for the gentleman I was previously matched with and that his medical team had decided to move forward with donation after all. However, because the donation had been sidelined for months already, the donation process would have to be extremely accelerated, with the official transplant taking place just 5 weeks later at a donation center in Texas. I knew that by bringing this opportunity back into my life, God was telling me to pursue it. In fact, it was incredibly good timing, as I was set to graduate college at the end of December and didn’t yet have any other obligations that would prevent me being able to travel and donate. I immediately told NMDP “yes” and jumped through all the necessary testing & questionnaire hoops again. I have to give a shout-out to the NMDP staff I worked with during this time, because they were so kind, informative, and effervescent in both their passion for their work and their gratitude for my participation. 

Soon enough, the week of my donation arrived. I was flown out to New Jersey and woke up bright and early the next day to report to the hospital for final eligibility testing. After being deemed ready to donate, I was led to a small transplant unit and assigned my own squishy throne to recline in for the next several hours. After some trial and error due to my small stature and weak right-side veins, I had needles inserted into both of my arms. These needles were hooked up to an apheresis machine that collected my blood, extracted the excess stem cells that I’d been receiving daily injections to produce, and returned the clean, filtered blood back to my system. While the whole setup was certainly unfamiliar and physically uncomfortable, it wasn’t really painful at all, which was a pleasant surprise. Due to my aforementioned weak veins, the donation process ended up taking a whopping 8 hours to complete – much longer than NMDP had anticipated – but I was ultimately able to provide enough stem cells for them to complete the transplant. 

Unfortunately, for confidentiality reasons, I am not yet allowed to know whether the transplant procedure was a success. I’ve decided to move forward under the assumption that it was, and that I was able to provide a life-changing service for that man and his family. That possibility in itself is a little surreal, as the whole process took what I saw as relatively little effort from my end. I am extremely grateful to have been able to walk through the stem cell donation process and all the intricacies within it, as it made me appreciate all of the unseen miracles that happen all around us each day, especially in the healthcare field. This experience also encouraged me to stay open-minded to new challenges and spontaneous adventures, because you truly never know what God will send your way – and isn’t that exciting?

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Harper is a recent graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College, where she studied Spanish and Sociology. You can find her serving up chicken & smiles at the Rochester Chick-fil-A as a Team Leader while she awaits her regional assignment to teach English abroad in Spain next year.