By Michael J. Johnson

Seventy percent of bone marrow donors do not know the recipient.

On March 27, in honor of one young bone marrow recipient, eight year-old Brennan Simkins, a bone marrow donor drive was held at Saint Mary on the Hill Parish Center in Augusta.

Brennan is a second grade student at the parish school. In January 2009 he was diagnosed with acute leukemia. Since then he has undergone two bone marrow transplants. His older brother Nathaniel (Nat) provided the first matching marrow for transplant.

The procedure to remove bone marrow is performed under anesthesia and may leave the donor a little sore for several days. Nat said the ordeal was well worth the discomfort and that donors should “be proud because they just saved someone’s life.” The generosity of an anonymous stranger provided a match for Brennan’s critical second transplant.

The Simkins family moved from Augusta to Memphis, where Brennan is a patient at Saint Jude’s Hospital and where he received his second transplant 60 days ago. His father said, “We have lived in this world with other families for 18 months and I cannot count the number of families who would not still have their child were it not for a bone marrow donor.”

The donor drive organized at Saint Mary on the Hill Parish sought people for testing as potential donors for other recipients. There is no charge to potential donors, who must be between the ages of 18 and 55 and in good general health. Tracey Bennett stopped in early Saturday morning. She has an eight-year-old son. Although she does not know Brennan, she said, “I cannot look at my son without thinking of Brennan.”

After a brief verbal medical screening Bennett provided contact information and made her way to the swabbing station. Tara Capps offered Bennett some water with which to rinse her mouth prior to swabbing the inside of her check. Bennett swabbed the inside of each of her cheeks and placed the swabs in a box for testing. The entire process took 10 minutes of her time. Whether Bennett will match up with a recipient is now up to the labs at DKMS Americas (see http://www.dkmsamericas.org). DKMS processes the swab samples and matches potential donors with recipients. If a match is made, the decision to actually donate bone marrow always rests with the donor.