On Friday, April 26, the WCU football team will be hosting a bone marrow drive from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the Sturzbecker Gym. The process involves filling out paperwork and having DNA samples extracted from the donor’s mouth with cotton swabs, a process which takes about 10 minutes. The donor’s cotton swab will then be submitted to be checked against potential recipients for a match. The football team’s bone marrow drive donors will not be the only WCU students who have donated.
According to Amy Farnum of the NCAA, the chances of a match occurring are rare. There are approximately 20 million people worldwide registered as potential marrow donors, but there are only about 250 matches found each year, making it a 1-in-80,000 chance that a registered donor will be a match. But Tori Dugan, WCU women’s lacrosse player, ended up being one in 80,000.
Dugan underwent the operation in November of 2011 after she was matched to a 50 year old man with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A month after her donation, the unnamed recipient was out of the hospital and doing much better.
“I think everybody should at least be on the registry, and if you are matched up, you still have a choice to be a donor,” Dugan said. “It was awesome.”
Another WCU athlete, Jared Bonacquisti of the football team, donated bone marrow in 2011, as well, after a week of injections to stimulate stem cell reproduction.
“It’s really exciting knowing that I’m a match to somebody, and I can actually potentially help this person and continue their life,” said Bonacquisti, according to CBS Philly.
The WCU football team hopes to be as successful in their bone marrow drive. Any interested students and faculty should stop by the gym in the Sturzbecker Health Science Center. Even if their cotton swab is a match with a recipient, the person still has the option to say no. But saying yes could save a life.
Clare Haggerty is a second-year student majoring in English. She can be reached at CH757342@wcupa.edu.