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Heroes among us: Simple cheek swab leads to renewed hope

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Stacia Zachary
  • 352nd Special Operations Wing (Provisional)
Today's American Airmen are warriors who answered their nation's call. Each Airman who serves gives something essential to the mission - protecting the base perimeter, launching aircraft, infiltrating Special Tactics Airmen into a hostile area or creating an air bridge by delivering fuel to aircraft while airborne.

Some Airmen continue to give, even when the mission ends.

For Capt. Jeffrey Falcone, 321st Special Tactics Squadron director of operations, giving more started with a trip to a base blood drive in 2001.

"In December 2001, I was donating blood and they were doing a bone marrow donor registration drive at the same time," Falcone said. "During the initial blood donation interview, I was asked if I wanted to take part in the donor registration. Since it was a simple cheek swab I gave consent without putting too much thought into it. I didn't actually consider what it would be like to be a donor at that time."

Individuals who donate have their samples logged into a national database. This registry allows medical facilities identify who could be a potential match for a person in need of bone marrow. People can be on a registry for years before being identified as a potential match, if ever.

"One of the hurdles we face is the time gap from when a person donates to when they become a match," said Kathryn Bransdtad, C.W. Bill Young Department of Defense Marrow Donor Program recruiter. "When we call, people think we're telemarketers because they forget they've donated. So, we like to tell people, 'you may have forgotten us, but we haven't forgotten you.'"

In 2011, Falcone was informed by the C.W. Bill Young DoD Marrow Donor Program he was a potential match. Although this was an unexpected call, Falcone very much wished to help - only problem was he was deploying soon after this notification. In 2014, the call came again and this time, he accepted.

"In April 2014, I was informed again that I had been identified as a potential match for a patient in need of a marrow transplant," he said.

Everything moved rapidly after that. Soon after the notification, Falcone had a phone consultation with a program coordinator. This coordinator discussed the entire process of testing to see if Falcone was the perfect match - which a quick blood sample taken at the hospital on RAF Lakenheath confirmed - up to the donation.

"The donor program made my appointments for me. All I had to do was show up. They confirmed from my blood draws that I was a match for a 55-year-old male patient with acute lymphoblastic leukemia," Falcone said.

The process involved a lot of paperwork to include consent forms, program policies, travel guidelines and reimbursement procedures, commander approval, physical instructions and a health history questionnaire.

"I was given educational materials as well as some paperwork to complete," he said. "I had a specific person from the program assigned to me the entire time and they were readily available to answer questions. After completing all of the paperwork I was booked for a donation in June - less than two months after the initial notification."

The donor program made all the travel arrangements, too.

"They pay for flights, hotel, taxis, food and other related expenses," Falcone said. "They even paid for someone to accompany me during the trip."

The process that Falcone underwent to donate his bone marrow is called peripheral blood stem cell donation. This process takes five days with the first four days allotted to receive a shot which boosts the number of stem cells in a person's body and one day of collection which lasted three hours for Falcone.

"The staff, from start to finish, was very supportive and attentive," Falcone said.

Recovery from the bone marrow donation was quicker than Falcone expected.

"Recovery was no big deal. I never felt that bad at all -- just tired, minor headaches and muscle aches, Falcone said. "I think I felt close to 100 percent after about a week."

In fact, Falcone said the process was so well enacted and the people were so professional that the entire experience was one he wouldn't mind repeating.

"I thought about not donating because of work commitments and potential side effects, but I decided those were excuses not legitimate reasons," Falcone said. "Once I started having more frequent communication with the donor program, I felt much better about it because of how supportive they were."

One of the donor program's objectives is to make the process as easy as possible. By working with the DoD, it is able to tap into a larger pool of donors from a broad spectrum of nationalities.

"We are able to find more matches because of the diversity within the military," Bransdtad said. "And, with the amount of people in the service, we have a large majority of healthy and young people who can help."

One interesting fact about donating bone marrow samples is this increases the selection of candidates who could potentially save a life. Bone marrow matches greatly depend on the ethnicity of people. For example, a person of German-Italian descent is more likely to find a match if the donor is of the same pedigree.

"The diversity of ethnicity is greater (in the military) which allows us to get as many people from these ethnicities as possible," Bransdtad said. "This greatly increases the chances of saving a life."

Within every person lies the chance to save a life. The gratitude from Falcone's bone marrow recipient impacted his life, too, and is one of the reasons he will continue to remain on the bone marrow registry.

"I would definitely do it again, without hesitation," Falcone said. "I received letters from my recipient and his wife about four months after the donation. The gratitude they expressed was amazing. I had never had anyone in my life be that thankful for something I had done. It was a very humbling and rewarding experience."

For more information on the bone marrow donor program, go to http://www.dodmarrow.org/