A 25-year-old Redding, Connecticut woman meets the Arizona man who was battling deadly Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) until she saved his life by donating her bone marrow.
Jennie Bunce joined Gift of Life Marrow Registry through a sorority swab drive at North Carolina’s High Point University in 2016. "I can remember being like 13 or 14 years old during some school bucket list project. On there was save a life and I got to cross it off so that’s pretty cool."
Her life-saving match-- 33-year-old father of six from Mesa, Mark Roser. Roser learned he had ALL after breaking a hip and feeling increasingly weak in 2018.
He needed a bone marrow transplant to survive. He says, "When they discovered it, 94% of my blood cells basically contaminated, so I was really at the final deadline."
Gift of Life Marrow Registry matched the Jennie to Mark with months.
The pair met for the first time at Boca Oyster Bar in Bridgeport in October. Mark says, " I feel great. I’m much more positive between work and family. My priorities have completely changed. Time with the kids, time with my wife, just being there for them instead of working so much... I treasure every moment with them now."
According to the gift of Life marrow registry website: "Blood cancer is an umbrella term for cancers that affect the blood, bone marrow and lymphatic system. In most blood cancers, normal blood cell development is interrupted by uncontrolled growth of abnormal blood cells. The abnormal blood cells can prevent blood from fighting off infection or preventing uncontrolled bleeding.
Unfortunately, blood cancer can strike any one of us at any time. Approximately every three minutes, a child or adult in the United States is diagnosed with a type of blood cancer. That’s 360 people a day, 130,000 people a year.
There are three main types of blood cancers: Leukemia, cancer that is found in your blood and bone marrow; Lymphoma, blood cancer that affects the lymphatic system; and Myeloma, blood cancer that specifically targets your plasma cells.
For many, there is hope of a cure through a bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cell transplant. Today, transplantation, of healthy stem cells donated by related and unrelated volunteers, offers hope to many patients suffering from these sometimes deadly diseases.
Advances in transplantation have made this procedure a reality for thousands who are alive today because a stranger gave them the Gift of Life!."
check out: https://www.giftoflife.org to learn more and even register for a swab kit and become a donor yourself.
