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Ex-Marine urges bone-marrow donation
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
LISBON
James H. Seidler became a bone-marrow donor in 2009 for much the same reason he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2004.
“I wanted to do something positive with my life,” he said.
After graduating in 2002 from East Palestine High School, Seidler, 27, worked for a couple of years before enlisting Dec. 6, 2004, for four years, which included a tour in Kuwait and Iraq. He was a corporal when he left active duty.
“My country was at war, and I wanted to help, and I wanted my family to be proud of me,” said Seid-ler, a criminal-justice student at ITT Technical Institute in Austintown.
“It was time to turn my life around and become a man,” said Seidler, a corrections officer at Columbiana County Jail. He plans to work in a federal prison after he graduates from ITT.
The bone-marrow-donor process started while he was in the military, when a Navy corpsman asked him for a mouth swab to add his information to the bone-marrow-donor database.
“I didn’t know anything about bone-marrow donation at the time and forgot about the whole thing until October 2009, when I was contacted by the C.W. Bill Young Marrow Donor Center,” he said.
The C.W. Bill Young Marrow Donor program was established in 1990 within the Department of Defense to support DOD volunteer marrow donors by coordinating medical and logistic support.
“It was 9 a.m., and I had just finished working a double at the jail when the donor center called and notified me that I was a possible match, and would I be a donor. I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it,’” he said.
He was sent to Beaver Valley Medical Center in Beaver, Pa., for blood work and received a call a couple of weeks later telling him he was the best match.
Things moved quickly after that. He was retested, flown to Washington, D.C., accompanied by his mother, and on Oct. 21, his bone marrow was harvested and sent to the recipient. Seidler said the whole process, from beginning to end, took only a week and that all his expenses were paid.
He urged people to sign up to become possible bone-marrow donors.
It’s not as painful as people may believe, he said. The only part of the process that caused him discomfort was the injection of the drug Filgrastim‚ö which builds up stem cells before the donation, he said.
Seidler’s case, as do about 75 percent of the cases, did not involve the actual removal of bone marrow, which also is an outpatient procedure, said a representative of the National Marrow Donor Program.
Under what is called the peripheral blood stem-cell donation process, his blood was removed from his body from one arm, sent through a machine that separates the stem cells from the blood, and was then pumped back into his body via the other arm.
When that process occurred, the pressure in his lower back, caused by the Filgrastim injections, was relieved, Seidler said.
The stem cells, a National Marrow Donor Program spokeswoman said, find their way to the recipient’s bone marrow.
In Seidler’s case, the recipient is a 41-year-old woman with leukemia.
“It feels good to potentially save someone’s life. It makes me feel like I did something. I hope it works out,” said Seidler, son of Shawn and Norman Carpenter of East Palestine. He has two sisters, Christina Holley of Georgetown, Pa., and Jaime Seidler of East Palestine.
“We are extremely proud of Jimmy,” said his mother.
Seidler said that after a year, if both parties agree, the donor and the recipient can contact each other.
Seidler said he would not initiate contact, but if his recipient wants to, it would be “fine with him.”
He does, however, receive periodic updates on her progress. So far, she is doing well, he said.
Seidler is not permitted to donate to another recipient for a year “in case she rejects or has a relapse” and needs him again.
“I hope she and her family are doing well. I’m just happy I could help,” he added.
BONE MARROW
Becoming a donor
The first step to become a bone marrow donor is to join the Be The Match Registry. Doctors around the world search the registry to find a match for their patients.
If a doctor selects you as a match for a patient, you may be asked to donate bone marrow or cells from circulating blood called PBSC donation.
Patients need donors between age 18 and 60 who meet health guidelines and are willing to donate to any patient in need.
Source: www.marrow.org the Web site for the National Marrow Donor Program