Julie Chadd was called upon to save Judy Chapman’s life.

Chadd, an Eastern professor, had received calls from the bone marrow registry before, but because of a medical condition she is not eligible to donate to Chapman, a close friend.

“(Chapman) was actually diagnosed in August and admitted to the hospital just a few days later,” Chadd said. “She was in the hospital beginning Aug. 11.”

Chadd may not have been able to donate, but luckily a match was eventually found and Chapman, who had acute myeloid leukemia-a type of bone marrow cancer-is on the road to recovery.

“She is out of the hospital and at home now,” Chadd said.

Chadd, who said she wants to do what she can to increase the number of donors on the marrow donor list, then went on to share her story with the students of her Methods of Teaching Career and Technical Education class, prompting them to re-evaluate their class project.

Kathleen Kash, a senior technology major, is a student in her class.

Kash said the methods class is comprised of seniors who will, for the most part, be student teaching in the upcoming spring semester.

After hearing about the disproportional relationship of the need for bone marrow and those donating, Kash said her class was adamant in forming a donor drive for its service-learning project.

One in 540 of those on the Be a Match Registry in the United States will actually donate their marrow, according to the National Marrow Donor Program.

“We decided that instead of doing individual groups that we would do a whole class (project) and focus on the bone marrow donation,” Kash said.

According to the National Marrow Donor Program, 10,000 patients need a bone marrow transplant and only half will receive them.

Kash said the class has had various events including an Oct. 27 silent auction and a fundraising dinner, and today’s bone marrow drive.

The drive will be taking place today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Shelbyville Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

The class currently has 12 people registered from the previous events.

“Our goal is to meet 35 people who are willing to donate,” Kash said. “This is just the first step.”

The class surpassed its goal of $1,500 by raising more than $2,700 to pay for the 35 people the group registered.

Samantha Fifer, a senior family and consumer sciences major, said the criteria is a very narrow gateway.

“Things like age, weight and if you are on certain medication can prevent people from being able to donate,” Fifer said.

Fifer said students will be ruled out if they are unable to donate during the first process.

“So you won’t have to go through the process of doing the swab to only be told that you can’t (donate),” Fifer said.

Donors will not actually be giving their bone marrow today, but the process will only consist of students seeing if they meet the donor criteria and mouth swabs.

It is a longer process than most donations, Kash said.

“After that they contact you to see if you still want to be a part of it and then they go into a personal interview,” Kash said. “Then it goes into if you actually want to transplant your bone marrow.”

To effectively find a match, doctors look for donors who match their patient’s tissue type, specifically their human leukocyte antigen tissue type- proteins found on most cells in the body, according to the National Marrow Donor Program.

Fifer said there are different methods to collecting bone marrow.

“There are actually two ways they can get it now, one is a surgery and the second one is through your blood,” Fifer said.

Peripheral blood stem cell donation is a way to collect blood-forming cells for transplantation where the drug filgrastim is injected to move more blood-forming cells out of the marrow and into the bloodstream.

Then the donor’s blood is removed through a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cell, a process similar to donating plasma cells.

People who have HIV/AIDs, sleep apnea, cystic fibrosis, take depression medication, those who have had cancer or pulmonary diseases and those who are overweight cannot donate.

The bone marrow transplant helps the receiver make their own white blood cells, Kash said.

“It’s supposed to make it so that they can make their own white blood cells to overpass the cancer,” Kash said.

The actual after-effects of the donation can be painful, Kash said.

“It takes about 3 to 5 days for people to get back (to their previous state),” Kash said.

According to the National Marrow Donor Program, common side effects of marrow donation include: lower back pain, fatigue, stiffness when walking and bleeding at the collection site.

“By your little sacrifice of pain you are offering someone their life,” Kash said.

Nike Ogunbodede can be reached at 581-2812

or ovogunbodede@eiu.edu.