Spring 2010 - Assumption High School

Compassion
Inspires
Compassion inspires kindness. It inspires
generosity. It inspires love. In the case
of Jennifer McGill ’08, her sense of
compassion has inspired action, a true act of mercy,
that might have resulted in new life.
Early in February, Jennifer, a current sophomore at Ohio University
studying exercise physiology and playing varsity field
hockey, was called on to serve as a bone marrow donor for a
stranger as an ultimate result of the compassion that she felt for
a teammate who lost her brother to acute myogenic lymphoma
in 2008. Jennifer’s teammate, Marcy Dull, wanted to take action
to help prevent another family from experiencing this kind
of loss. Because she knew how crucial the bone marrow transplant
her brother received from an anonymous donor had been
to his treatment, Marcy decided to spearhead an effort on Ohio
University’s campus to raise awareness of and add potential
donors to the National Bone Marrow Registry. She called on
her field hockey teammates to assist her in her efforts. Inspired
by both her empathy for Marcy and Marcy’s reaction to her
loss, Jennifer got on board to help organize this effort. They
initially began by talking to friends about the impact of bone
marrow donation, but decided this wasn’t enough.
Over the course of three months, the girls advertised and organized
an on-campus registration event for the National Bone
Marrow Registry which allowed students, faculty, and staff to
take the very simple step of registering as possible donors.
(The process is as simple as filling out a personal information
form and swabbing the inside of the mouth with three cotton
swabs.) They were thrilled when 150 people on Ohio
University’s campus, including Jennifer, signed up to be
possible donors at the event, which took place in May of 2009.
Jennifer continued on with her studies, her sport, and her life,
but then she received a phone call in February that changed
her life and quite possibly the life of a 66-year-old man whom
Jennifer has never met. Like Marcy’s brother, he was suffering
from acute myogenic leukemia, and the National Bone Marrow
Registry had found a possible match—Jennifer McGill.
Theresa Liebert Schuhmann `92
The caller from the National Bone Marrow Registry informed
Jennifer of the possible match and asked her if she would be
willing to have further blood work to determine if this was the
case. Jennifer agreed, and testing revealed that Jennifer was an
eight-point match on an eight-point scale, which is a rarity for
non-relatives. Jennifer decided to continue with the process
of donation which included two physicals, blood work, and a
series of shots of Filigrastim to increase her body’s production
of stem cells. She laughingly recalls that on the day of the donation
she already “felt
like a pin cushion.”
Life
On March 1, Jennifer
underwent the
six hour process of
having peripheral
blood stem cells removed
from her body through a central line in her neck which
consisted of running her blood through a centrifuge machine
that separated her red blood cells, platelets, and stem cells into
separate bags. The blood cells and platelets were returned to
her body, and the stem cells were sent on for the donation.
We recently had the opportunity to talk with
Jennifer, and she offered the following reflections
on her experience.
Q. What were your initial feelings and reactions to the
request to consider testing?
A. The day I got that phone call, I was not having a good day.
But after I got off the phone, nothing seemed to matter. I had a
lot of emotions running through me at that time. I was totally
shocked, for one. I never thought in a million years I would
be the person to get called. I was nervous, excited, and I felt
truly blessed that I might have an opportunity to really impact
someone’s life.
Q. What did you feel like when you found out you were an
eight-point match?
A. I felt like a twin, sort of. The odds of matching someone
eight for eight are very slim. Marcy’s brother’s match wasn’t
eight for eight, and when I found out how unlikely it was for
me to have all markers match up, it felt almost surreal. This
was almost as perfect of a situation as there could be for a
patient, and that was a pretty cool thing to think about.
Q. What do you know about the person to whom you donated
your marrow?
A. I know that my patient is a 66-year-old male with acute
myogenic leukemia. I have been told that he has responded to
all treatments he has received very well. I’m not allowed to know
anything more than that about the patient because of legal issues.
8 Assumption Magazine Spring 2010