The Gift of Life swab station was at
the Hamilton YMCA training day (aka Pep Rally) for 1200 camp counselors. Jeff’s job was to address the crowd and encourage
them to join the bone marrow registry.
This he needed to accomplish with only two minutes at the
microphone. That didn’t leave a lot of
time for details of his story so he whittled his speech down to essentials and
added a bit of competition, “Freehold is way ahead. And Lower Bucks, you’re in my neighborhood so
I want to see you at our table!” At that
point, we’d only collected DNA from eight potential donors – all from Freehold
- so he was particularly clever to turn that into a game.
We had a steady stream of people
swab all morning. Our collection team
included Jeff, Theresa and Rosie (good advertisement for why Jeff is glad to be
alive), Stem Cell Donor Frank, Nick Hudson from Gift of Life and me. Often Jeff was out of sight somewhere and I eventually
realized that he was carrying Rosie around the grounds, talking up Gift of Life
whenever he saw that we were ready for more “customers.”
Some of the young people were embarrassed
when the swabbing action caused them to slobber. Others asked, “Is it okay if I just ate a
Jolly Rancher?” or “…had gum?” Jeff teased the gum-chewer, “Just stick the gum
in there!” but I don’t think she did.
Some people needed to tell their stories, their reasons for their
willingness to join the registry: “my cousin,” “my brother,” “my niece.” One man asked Jeff, “Can I talk to you? I just lost my dad to AML.” Some seemed nervous, others more
committed. We loved them all.
Stem Cell Donor Frank’s story is a
particularly good one, well-known among Gift of Life staff members. When Nick realized who Frank was, he said, “Oh,
you’re that guy!” Frank donated at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital
the day after Hurricane Sandy in a lab opened just for him – which was running on
generator power. He had to use a back
door - and maybe even a secret handshake (not really). I told Frank how nerve-wracking donation day
was for us, when Jeff was without marrow, very sick and waiting for his life-saving
juice. The family of Frank’s recipient had
the added concern of a hurricane and power outages. What a nail-biter! Sadly, Frank will never meet his
recipient. Still, he is hopeful that he
will be someone’s match again. Awesome
guy!
Nicole once told us about the
special blanket Gift of Life donors are given on their donation day. The GOL staff member who sits with them
during the donation brings a blanket that has been signed by each of the Gift
of Life staff members, thanking them for their donation. It was nice to hear Frank and Nick, who is
also a donor, talk about their blankets with the same reverence Nicole has for
hers. Gift of Life really knows how to
take care of people.
