Honey Brook mother and daughter Carol Rathgeber and Caitlin Mooney are teaming up with Delete Blood Cancer to hold a bone marrow donor registration drive on Jan. 30 from 5-8 p.m. at St. Peter UCC in Knauertown.
Mooney, a 24-year-old who now lives in Philadelphia, donated bone marrow in September to a baby boy with an autoimmune disorder, which sparked the idea for the drive.
“My sister had leukemia and passed away two years ago,” said Rathgeber. “At the time, my brother and I were going to be tested to see if either of us was a match, but my brother had had cancer and wasn’t even able to be tested, so the whole thing never happened. I had thought about doing it before, and when my daughter told me she was doing it, it kind of started the whole thing.”
Rathgeber personally contacted Delete Blood Cancer to set up a drive with her daughter.
“I thought, ‘What better person to do it than a person who just went through it?'”
The drive invites anyone between the ages of 18 and 55 to come out and register. Dinner will also be served at the event.
“Of course, you have to be in good health,” said Rathgeber. “If you register by the age of 55, they can call you up to the age of 62. Whoever comes will answer questions, and as long as they are eligible, a swab will be taken from the inside of their cheek to see if it’s a possible match. They also get a little bit of your background information, and that also helps them to determine eligibility.”
Delete Blood Cancer shares a national registry with other organizations, so someone who is determined to be a possible match could be contacted at any time.
“I signed up in late February of last year and got a call in September of this year,” said Mooney. “First, I had to go get a blood draw to make sure I was a definite match, and every time they talked to me, they would ask if I still wanted to do it. They definitely give you an option, which is nice. A month before the donation, I had to go to Georgetown University Hospital in D.C. for a physical, and that was the last step to the process.”
While in D.C., Mooney met a man who had just donated and had a chance to speak with him.
Having always heard that bone marrow donation is painful, Mooney wanted to get insight from someone who had been through it.
“He said it wasn’t painful at all, and it definitely wasn’t,” said Mooney. “It felt like a sore muscle in the bottom of my back, and after a day I was walking around D.C. with my mom.”
Mooney has no regrets about deciding to donate.
“It still is amazing to me that it is that simple,” she said. “I’m a nanny, and children just get to me a little. The best part about the whole donation is that he doesn’t have to have surgery. They hook it up the same way they would a blood transfusion, and the stem cells just do their thing. Science is amazing.”
Mooney will receive an update about the boy’s condition two to three weeks from now.
“How it works is the first update in six weeks later, and then every couple months after that,” said Mooney. “After a year, if everything goes well, I will get to meet the boy and his family.”
Until then, the only information Mooney has about the boy is that he is under a year old, and he has an autoimmune condition. Law prohibits any other information from being disclosed.
Although Mooney went through a procedure to donate actual bone marrow, there is another way to donate.
“One way is through blood, and the other is through the actual marrow,” said Rathgeber. “The majority of the time, they will use blood, and that process is done easily. They draw blood, take what they need from it, and they put it back into the donor’s body.”
The mother and daughter urge anyone who is interested to attend their drive and learn more.
“It’s such a simple thing to do that could save a person’s life,” said Mooney. “It’s not painful at all, and it feels so good to know that I could have such a big impact on someone.”
For more information on the drive, donation and registration visit the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/events/938182706193673/ or visit the Delete Blood Cancer site at www.deletebloodcancer.org.
