{"id":74204,"date":"2025-03-17T08:06:49","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T15:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=74204"},"modified":"2025-03-17T08:06:49","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T15:06:49","slug":"bone-marrow-donation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/bone-marrow-donation\/","title":{"rendered":"Marrow matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

In August, <\/span>Andrea Trujillo Lerner<\/span><\/b> was preparing for the fall semester when she got an unexpected, ultimately life-changing call.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The call included an introduction\u2014we\u2019re the National Marrow Donation Program (NMDP)\u2014and reminded her that more than a decade ago, she\u2019d joined their donation registry and sent in a cheek swab. They had a patient with a life-threatening illness for whom she was a match. Was she still interested in donating stem cells?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The associate clinical professor of physical therapy didn\u2019t even consider her answer.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the easiest ways that you can help someone,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can literally save their life, or be a part of that process, by just giving a small part of yourself.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Aubrie
Aubrie Vargas celebrating with a bone marrow recipient. Top photo: Andrea Trujillo Lerner hooked up to an apheresis machine to donate stem cells.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now Trujillo Lerner is bringing the opportunity to be on the donor registry to NAU\u2019s campus, hoping to get as many students, staff and faculty between the ages of 18 and 40 to sign up. Joining her are physical therapy students helping out as part of a service learning class and NAU alumna <\/span>Aubrie Vargas<\/span><\/b>, an account manager for NMDP who has her own reasons to be passionate about curing blood cancers and disorders.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy hope is that we\u2019re doing enough work now so that we can get people\u2019s future donors on the registry,\u201d Vargas said. \u201cWhen these patients need a match, it may be their only hope for a cure.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How to join the donor registry: Swing by the Union or the Dub between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on March 25 to sign up and get your cheek swabbed. If you can\u2019t make it in person, go to <\/span><\/b>NMDP’s website<\/span><\/b><\/a> to get a kit sent to you.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A donor\u2019s story<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Trujillo Lerner found out about marrow donation more than a decade ago, when her cousin was diagnosed with leukemia and needed cell therapy. She signed up with NMDP then, wanting to do something to help, even though she knew it was a long shot\u2014being a match has a strong genetic component, and she and her cousin are not related by blood.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat can I do to become a part of this?\u201d Trujillo Lerner remembered thinking. \u201cI want to be there for somebody else.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"AndreaIn the 11 years since her cousin got treatment and went into remission, she\u2019d never gotten a call. Not until last summer, when that email hit her inbox, did she remember that cheek swab. She got a physical exam and got her blood drawn for tests, she took some prep medication and she talked regularly with an NMDP rep to get her questions answered. The process was easy, Trujillo Lerner said; the organization pays for and sets up all the appointments and flew her to Houston for the procedure.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She also dispelled a common myth about stem cell or marrow donation: It\u2019s really not painful. Her donation was of peripheral stem cells, which is about 90% of donations these days. She was hooked up to an apheresis machine, which is like having one IV in each arm (the same machine used to donate plasma); the blood was drawn, run through the machine to remove stem cells and pumped back into her body.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The other 10% is marrow donation, which does require anesthesia, but it\u2019s a 30-minute outpatient procedure that leaves the donor a little sore\u2014\u201cit\u2019s definitely not as bad as you have heard.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hear from recipients in NMDP\u2019s \u201cWhere are they now\u201d video.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What if you need a donor?\u00a0<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
\"Aubrie
Aubrie Vargas with her mother, who shaved her head while Vargas was going through chemo in 2002.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2002, Vargas was a senior at NAU, majoring in public relations while thinking about teaching, spending her free time playing volleyball and enjoying her college years. Then she got in a car accident and found herself with persistent back pain.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It happens after an accident, so she went to a chiropractor. But it kept getting worse until she lost feeling in her legs, so she got an MRI.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI remember lying in the MRI machine, and in the little tech window I could see one person come in, and then three people came in, and I was having pretty severe pain at that point, and I knew something wasn\u2019t right,\u201d Vargas said. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That \u201csomething\u201d was a mass the size of a softball wrapped around her spine, which a biopsy showed was cancerous. She had lymphoma. Almost immediately, she started a five-week round of radiation to shrink the tumor, then did 15 weeks of chemotherapy, then another five weeks of radiation. Depending on how those went, a bone marrow transplant was a possibility.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Vargas went into remission after that treatment and didn\u2019t need the transplant, but the experience left her with profound gratitude for the people who made such treatment possible. If she ever relapses, that might be her only or best option. Knowing that strangers are willing to donate\u2014that a stranger may be what saves a patient with lymphoma, leukemia or other blood disorders\u2014motivated her to first volunteer, then work for the NMDP.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For 16 years, she has gone to events like this one at NAU, answering questions, dispelling that myth that donating marrow is difficult or painful and explaining to people the importance of having the widest possible variety of potential donors on the registry. She says it like this: You have a tissue twin in the world, and if your tissue twin ever needs you, by registering you\u2019re saying, \u201cdon\u2019t worry, I\u2019ve got your back.\u201d Maybe your tissue twin will never get sick, but if they do, you\u2019re there.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So sign up, Vargas said. Spend five minutes, get in the registry, be there for your tissue twin.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to find a donor,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a misconception a lot of people have that there are tons of donors, so they don\u2019t need my help, but we absolutely do. Even though we have about 39 million people on the registry, sometimes a patient may only have one donor match. It could be you.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/p>\n

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-8737 | heidi.toth@nau.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In August, Andrea Trujillo Lerner was preparing for the fall semester when she got an unexpected, ultimately life-changing call.\u00a0 The call included an introduction\u2014we\u2019re the National Marrow Donation Program (NMDP)\u2014and reminded her that more than a decade ago, she\u2019d joined their donation registry and sent in a cheek swab. They had a patient with a…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":74205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}