Collegiate Times

Virginia Tech alumnus Paul Stevens was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer at age 26.

Paulini stood in line with about 1,000 other students Thursday waiting to perform the matching process. Students filled out an application and performed a cheek swab to collect DNA data, which could match them with someone who needs bone marrow.

Second year masters student Sarah Lapp, a biomedical engineering major, said the cheek swab process “was very quick and easy.”

“If I need something, I hope someone could help,” Lapp said. “If I can be the person to help someone else, that’s great.”

Besides growing the National Marrow Registry, Thursday’s drive had a more important goal in mind — battling the misconceptions surrounding the process of being a stem cell or bone marrow donor.

“People think that donating involves a painful procedure, but chances are it’s as easy as giving blood,” Rose said.

The majority of patients like Stevens, 80 percent, only need stem cells, which come from plasma.

“It’s as easy as donating plasma, and then they ship those cells off and put them in someone who needs them, like me, and hope that they stimulate the growth of new bone marrow,” Stevens said.

The remaining 20 percent that need bone marrow require a slightly more complicated procedure, but still one that does not cause excruciating pain.

“I’ll be the first to say that I had these same misconceptions before I was diagnosed,” Stevens said. “The way things work is they call and let you know you’re a match, and you still have the option to say no or to say yes and save someone’s life,” Stevens said.

The procedure involves a doctor applying a local anesthesia to the hip and then extracting a small amount of marrow from that area, where bone marrow is harvested. “I was sore for a day or two, but it didn’t put me out of any of my daily activities,” Stevens said.

After losing a close friend to leukemia four years ago, second year Ph.D. student Sarah Surak and her husband didn’t hesitate to sign up for the national registry to donate bone marrow.

“If they had been able to find a donor she could have been alive today,” Surak said of her friend, who was only 24 when she died.

Still grieving over this untimely loss, Surak and her husband recently got word from the National Registry that her husband is a match for a 23-year-old male from North Carolina.

The two will be traveling south over spring break to have the procedure done at Vanderbilt hospital.

“When we found out, my husband was nervous at first,” Surak said. “Now, though, he’s pretty excited that he will be able to help save a life.”

Stevens has turned to his faith for strength throughout his treatment.

“If anything, this experience has given me a stronger knowledge that there is more to life than just this earth; this is just a small bit of our existence,” Stevens said. “When you face your own mortality, regardless of what religion you practice, I believe you have to face it spiritually.”

A record-breaking number of potential donors came to support Stevens during Thursday’s bone marrow drive.

Although Stevens has participated in four or five different drives, including one at UNC Charlotte and one at Appalachian State University, he said this was the largest turnout he’d seen at any drive.

“We’ve had nearly 1,000 come out today,” he said. “The largest drive the national bone marrow people had been to was 800.”

Stevens said students had been “happy to help out.”

“There really is a Hokie spirit,” he said.

Stevens said although he was “pretty tired,” after a long day of teaching and then greeting potential donors at the drive, he was hopeful the event could connect donors with persons needing bone marrow.

“All it takes is one person to save somebody’s life,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be mine, although that’s obviously what I’m hoping for. I wish I wasn’t sick so I could donate to help someone else.”

Stevens will be participating in another bone marrow drive at Radford University on March 24.

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A version of this article appeared in the Feb 26 issue of the Collegiate Times.