Dr. Zachary Prudowsky has never met the woman whose life he helped save by being a bone marrow donor, but he feels a special connection to her.

Prudowsky, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist, was preparing to move to Houston when the National Marrow Donor Program reached out to him in 2018. The nonprofit, which receives funding from Congress to operate its Be The Match registry of volunteer donors in the U.S., told Prudowsky he was a preferred donor for a woman with leukemia.

It wasnt until one year after his donation that he learned the woman lived in Katy and had her bone marrow transplant at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

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Absolute serendipity, said Prudowsky, who is now 33. This saved a Texan, which is really, really cool.

She also sent him a note, saying his donation allowed her to meet her newborn grandchild. She referred to herself as granny, which tugged at Prudowskys heartstrings. That's what he calls his own grandmother.

That child gets to grow up with a grandmother because of Be The Match, he said. Thats where its really special for me.

Donate bone marrow: If you are between the ages of 18 and 40 and meet health guidelines, you can sign up to join the Be The Match Registry at bethematch.org. You can sign up online or find a local Be The Match Registry event.

Make a financial donation: You can also sign up to make one-time or monthly donations to the Be The Match Registry, or arrange your own fundraiser, at bethematch.org.

Prudowsky now serves as an advocate for Be The Match and the NMDP, which oversees a registry that includes more than 39 million potential donors. The NMDP helps facilitate more than 7,500 bone marrow transplants each year, Chief Policy Officer Brian Lindberg said.

Prudowsky and Lindberg are now advocating for Congress to pass H.R. 7770, or the Life-Saving Leave Act. The bill, introduced in May by Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, would amend the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993 to provide up to 40 hours of unpaid, non-consecutive leave for bone marrow or blood stem cell donors.

The bill essentially seeks to guarantee that a donor wont lose his or her job while taking time off to help save a life, Lindberg said.

The thing that we cant do is promise that person that after theyre done with this process that their job will be waiting for them in the end, he said. Thats what this bill is intended to solve.

Prudowsky enrolled as a donor in 2011, during his first year of medical school in South Carolina. He knew he planned to treat cancer and blood disorders for a career, so he felt it made sense for him to sign up.

He didnt hear anything until 2018, near the end of his residency in Ohio. The NMDPreached out to inform him that he was the preferred donor for the Texas woman. Coincidentally, Prudowsky was preparing to move to Texas for a fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine.

He underwent several tests to confirm he was the best match. Less than three months after the call, he made his donation at the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center in Houston.

Prudowsky donated via a process called peripheral blood stem cell collection (PBSC). Prior to the donation, donors get five days of injections of a drug called filgrastim to increase the number of blood-forming cells in their bloodstream. Those same blood-forming cells are found in bone marrow. The injections are given in outpatient clinics, and there are many instances where donors can return to work immediately afterward, Lindberg said.

On the day of the donation, blood was taken from Prudowskys arm and routed through a machine that collects those blood-forming cells. The rest of his blood was then returned to him through a needle in his other arm. The whole procedure took roughly four hours.

It was pretty uncomplicated, Prudowsky said. I kind of knew what I was getting myself into, but it was not a difficult process by any means.

Approximately 70 to 80 percent of all marrow donations occur via PBSC, Lindberg said.

The rest occur via traditional bone marrow donation, where a donor is put under anesthesia so a physician can collect cells from their hip. After that procedure, donors may experience soreness for the next few days, Lindberg said.

Weve heard it described many times as the kind of soreness that would be involved if you accidentally bumped into the corner of your dining room table.

The 40 hours outlined in the Life Saving Leave Act could be applied to recovery time, Lindberg said.

Prudowskys decision to be a donor while working as a doctor is not unique; both he and Lindberg said they know of others who work in medicine and are also signed up to be potential donors. But actually being matched can be tricky. Genetics has a lot to do with it: roughly 30 percent of patients have a family member who will be a fully-matched donor; the other 70 percent will need an anonymous donor from a registry.

Even then, the odds of finding a match vary greatly by ethnicity. While 79 percent of white patients will find an anonymous match, that drops to just under 50 percent for Asian and Hispanic patients, and to just 29 percent for Black patients, according to the NMDP.

The NMDPdoes help facilitate bone marrow transplants involving international donors and patients to increase the odds of finding a match, Lindberg said.

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However, its critical to keep recruiting a diverse pool of potential donors, Lindberg said. The greater the number, the greater the chance a patient will find a match.

Signing up to be a donor is straightforward, Prudowsky said. Anyone who is interested can sign up online on the Be The Match website. Theyll then submit a swab of the inside of their cheek, he said.

But Lindberg and Prudowsky also feel the Life Saving Leave Act could make the decision to be a donor even more straightforward. The NMDP can help donors by covering lost wages, as well as travel costs and other expenses during the process. But it cant guarantee theyll have a job if they take time off to donate.

There is simply no reason for anyone to be at risk of losing their job when it comes to potentially saving a life, Phillips said in a news release announcing the introduction of the bill.

Thirty-eight states already have laws that offer some level of paid or unpaid leave for bone marrow donors, but they vary widely, Lindberg said. Texas, for example, offers up to five days of leave without a reduction in salary, but the law only applies to state employees. The Life Saving Leave Act would create a uniform, federal standard, Lindberg said.

Lindberg is optimistic that the bill will become law. It has bipartisan support among seven cosponsors. Lindberg also said it has little to no economic impact because the leave is unpaid.

In the meantime, Prudowsky hopes more people will sign up for the Be The Match registry. He's seen his own patients learn they had a match for a bone marrow transplant, so he knows what a difference it can make.

"In my time in medicine, one of the most fulfilling things, if not the most fulfilling thing I've ever done, is this," he said. "And I didn't even have to be a doctor to do it."

evan.macdonald@chron.com

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A Houston doctor who saved a life by donating bone marrow wants to help others do the same. - Houston Chronicle

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