Nursing Student Association hosts bone marrow drive

For one Pitt alumnus, a simple cheek swab was enough to begin a process that would eventually… For one Pitt alumnus, a simple cheek swab was enough to begin a process that would eventually help save a child’s life.

In 2010, Jenna Tamburro, then a sophomore, registered at Pitt’s first annual bone marrow drive sponsored by the Nursing Student Association through DKMS, a bone marrow donation center.

The next year, Tamburro found out she was a potential match for a cancer patient, and after some blood work and a physical, discovered that her bone marrow was suitable to be transplanted into a patient.

This year, NSA will hold its third bone marrow drive with DKMS on April 2 and 3 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the William Pitt Union. Nursing students Rebecca Sponberg, Lindsey Pretsch and Jarae Payne organized the event.

At the drive, students who are interested in donating bone marrow will have a nurse swab the inside of their cheek with a cotton swab. The interior lining of the cheek provides a person’s human leukocyte antigen, a protein on the body’s cells that allows the immune system to recognize the cells as its own, said Sponberg, the vice president of NSA. This test will allow potential candidates to find out if they are eligible to donate bone marrow.

“It’s important that the donor’s HLA matches the recipient’s HLA so the immune system will accept it,” Sponberg, a sophomore, said.

Sponberg said that in the past two years, 604 students have registered as donors. Out of the 604, 19 students have been contacted as actual matches and 6 of the 19 have gone through the marrow donation process. None of the organizers could estimate how many people they are expecting to register this year.

“I thought it was so crazy that I got matched,” Tamburro, who now works at Phipps Conservatory, said. “I was shocked when it happened, but then actually really excited.”

To be eligible to register, a person has to be between the ages of 18 and 60 and in general good health. Sponberg stressed that it is important for younger people to register earlier because they will stay in the registry until they are 61 years old.

NSA tabled in Towers lobby and Victoria School of Nursing during the week before the drive in an effort to educate more students about the process. Students have a chance to get swabbed after finding out the details of marrow donation.

“We just try to inform a lot of people, but it’s definitely a scary thing for many,” Payne, a senior who has organized the event for the past two years, said.

Once a donor is registered with DKMS, he or she will receive a call if a genetic match is found with a patient who has a type of blood disorder like leukemia or lymphoma.  Then the donor will go through one of two different processes — peripheral blood stem cell donation, known as PBSC, or bone marrow donation.

According to Sponberg, willing donors undergo PBSC 70 percent of the time. PBSC involves a person’s blood stream. A pump will take out blood from the donor’s arm, remove the stem cells from the blood and put the remaining blood back through the other arm. The process takes four to six hours.

A donor will go through the bone marrow donation procedure when the patient needs direct bone marrow cells. In this process, a special syringe takes bone marrow from the inside of the back of the pelvic bone. The donor goes under general anesthesia for the procedure and receives pain medication once it’s finished, Sponberg said.

When Tamburro donated bone marrow, she underwent the PBSC procedure. For four days before the process, she had to take Neupogen, a drug that increases the blood cell count.

“I like to stress to people that it wasn’t inconvenient, and they try to make it very easy for you,” Tamburro said. “I was not that much of a fan of shots before this process, but I got used to it.”

Because pain is a major factor in many people’s decision to donate bone marrow, the Nursing Student Association is placing an extra emphasis on informing potential donors about every detail of the process. This includes providing details about what happens if they are accepted as a suitable donor, such as the different procedures they will have to undergo and the pain that might go along with it.

“It’s really sad when people get called to donate, and they back out on the donation,” Pretsch, a junior and president of NSA, said.

Tamburro said her experience donating the bone marrow was worthwhile. The donation was anonymous, but she was allowed to know the patient’s age and the type of cancer he was diagnosed with, although she wasn’t allowed to reveal any information about herself. After six months, the patient contacted Tamburro to let her know that he was doing well. In another six months, the two can meet if they choose to do so.

“If you have a chance to help someone, a little discomfort is not that big a deal,” she said.