Oct 09
29
Casey Coble, 27, the swim coach at the Lancaster Aquatic Club in PA, was diagnosed in April 2006 with a form of leukemia. Casey endured two years of chemo and went in to remission. The cancer returned in September, and he needs our help.
Every morning, while I’m sipping my Peet’s Coffee and slowly becoming aware of my surroundings – I scan a variety of online news sources. I start with sfgate.com and nytimes.com and move into local news, cycling news and finally, saving the best for last, swimming news. I peruse USMS.org to see what’s up in the Masters Swimming world, and I check headlines to see if anything exciting is happening to other swimmers. What can I say? It’s a big cup of coffee and it takes me a while to get started at 4:00 AM.
This morning I discovered Casey’s story. He needs a bone marrow transfusion, and if you would like to help, but don’t live near Lancaster, PA, you can still become a bone marrow donor.
What’s the first step? (That was my question anyway.) Join the “Be the Match RegistrySM.”
“Be The Match” offers people the opportunity to help a patient by donating bone marrow or umbilical cord blood. Thousands of patients with leukemia and other life-threatening diseases depend on the “Be The Match Registry” to find a match.
Bone marrow donors do not pay for donating and are never paid to donate. All medical costs are paid by the patient’s medical insurance or by the patient, sometimes with assistance from the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). The NMDP, which operates the “Be The Match Registry”, reimburses donors for travel costs, and may reimburse other costs on a case-by-case basis.
The only thing I know about donating bone marrow is what I’ve seen on tv shows like ER – and it always looks excruciating. I went to the NMDP website to find out what is truly involved in this process. It’s just really gotten to me that someone this young and athletic is stricken with this rotten disease.
Taken from the NMDP website: General or regional anesthesia is always used for the bone marrow donation procedure. Donors feel no needle injections and no pain during the marrow donation process. Afterwards, most donors feel some pain in the lower back for a few days or longer.
There are two ways to donate. The majority of 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 the patient’s doctor requests marrow, marrow donation is a surgical procedure, usually outpatient.
Surely we can help Casey, right?
