(L-R) Taylor Shorten, Sam Kimura and Alex Kimura (photo courtesy of SAM)

With the support of Delete Blood Cancer DKMS, the two sisters and their best friend Taylor Shorten began their road trip in January to visit all 50 states at churches, colleges, concerts and everything in between to promote increased awareness of blood cancer and blood diseases, in addition to finding donors for Sam and thousands of others.

Despite a busy, sometimes exhausting tour driving across America in a van named Maggie, Sam was able to spend a few moments to talk more about their cause and how people can potentially save someones life.

Alex and I came up with the concept of Sharing Americas Marrow about a year ago. We had been doing bone marrow donor drives ever since my diagnosis of severe aplastic anemia in 2010, but we wanted to do something really big. We enjoyed registering donors and knowing that each person has the potential to be a life-saving match, we decided to create a campaign around that idea. SAM evolved into a 50-state tour around the country with our best friend, Taylor Shorten, to register 50,000 potential donors.

We are working with Delete Blood Cancer DKMS to register potential donors. Delete Blood Cancer provides us with registration supplies in addition to testing each donor kit in the lab for potential donors to be listed on the registry.

Related: Five Healthy Foods For Your Brain

A Donor Jam is what we call a bone marrow donor drive. Its an event where people fill out a registration form and complete a cheek swab to get listed as a potential donor on the national registry. Bone marrow donor drive can sound intense, so we wanted to lighten it up a little and make it sound more fun, because saving lives is just thatfun!

Other groups can absolutely host a Donor Jam with us. With the help of Delete Blood Cancer, we can supply people with registration materials, training on how to register donors, flyers/promotional items to get the word out, etc. so that people can host their very own SAM Donor Jam.

In most cases, the success of allogeneic transplantation depends in part on how well the HLA antigens of the donors stem cells match those of the recipients stem cells. The higher the number of matching HLA antigens, the greater the chance that the patients body will accept the donors stem cells. In general, patients are less likely to develop a complication known as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) if the stem cells of the donor and patient are closely matched. Thus, finding a perfect match (also known as a 10/10 match) for a patient drastically minimizes the risk that the patient will reject the transplant or develop post-transplant complications.

We just felt that the van had the essence of a Maggie. We didnt necessarily choose the name, the name chose us.

Read the original:
The Story Of Sharing Americas Marrow