An Air Force civilian employee traveled to Washington, D.C., on March 23 to give the gift of life to a 10-year-old boy with severe aplastic anemia, a condition where the bone marrow does not produce enough -- or any -- new cells to replenish the blood cells.

James Speanburg donated 5.5 cups of marrow, which were harvested from his pelvic bones during a 90-minute procedure at Georgetown University Hospital. He is a 50-year-old certified pharmacy technician with the 22nd Medical Support Squadron and has been registered donor with National Marrow Donor Program’s C.W. Bill Young/Department of Defense Marrow Donor Program since 1995.

“I am thankful God has given me the opportunity to help someone in this way,” Mr. Speanburg said. “As a pharmacy tech, my job is to help people everyday by giving them medicine that will make them feel better, but this is different … I’m really helping this child -- I’m potentially saving his life.”

Mr. Speanburg said he received the call on Valentine’s Day notifying him that he was a potential match and was asked to go to Georgetown University Hospital for more extensive tests. The results confirmed that he was indeed a match. He said he was then told the recipient’s age, gender and disease.

And that’s all he may ever know.

During the search, donation and transplant process, and for at least 12 months after transplant, patient and donor identities are kept confidential. The transplant center and patient do not know the donor's name and are told only the age and sex of the donor. The donor is told only the patient’s age, sex and disease.

For the first year after transplant, the donor and patient may write letters anonymously through the NMDP, but they cannot share their names or any other identifying information. If the patient and donor both sign release forms, after one year, the NMDP lets them know how to contact each other. Some centers have more restrictive rules, and some centers do not allow the patient and donor to ever have direct contact.

Mr. Speanburg said it bothers him a little that he may not ever get to meet the young boy, but he understands the reasons for the privacy laws and he would not hesitate to donate again.

“There’s always the chance that things won’t work out, and it would be really hard on the family and me if that happened because things tend to get personal in a situations like this after you meet,” said Mr. Speanburg, who is a retired Air Force staff sergeant.

“I have a big heart and it would be hard for me to accept if things didn’t work out, but not knowing him, I can just say that I tried. On the other hand, although it is rare, it’s possible that he could need more of my marrow and I could be called again and I would not hesitate to do this again,” he said.

According to NMDP literature, each year more than 35,000 children and adults in the United States are diagnosed with diseases for which a marrow or blood cell transplant could be a cure. A transplant requires matching tissue types, which are inherited, between patient and donor, but 70 percent of patients do not have a matched donor in their family. Therefore, these patients and their physicians can turn to the NMDP for help with the search for a match.

Since tissue type is inherited, patients are most likely to match someone of their same race and ethnicity. Presently, there are more than 5.5 million donors in the organization’s national registry, but only about 8 percent, or one in 12, of those registered actually go on to donate.

There is a special need to recruit more donors who identify themselves as Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino.

Given the difficulty of finding matches and the urgent need of the patients, having a large database of registered donors is an advantage according to Dr. Franciso Bracho, an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics and the collection center director for the NMDP at Georgetown University Hospital’s Lombardi Cancer Center, as well as the lead physician for Mr. Speanburg’s surgery.

“We need as many people as possible to be donors because it’s hard to find a match,” Dr. Bracho said. “This is usually a person’s last chance at staying alive because if a patient needs bone marrow, they have no other options. With a 100 percent chance of dying, donors give patients a great chance at surviving.”

The Department of Defense has a large program and there are many military donors, he said.

“For a long time Georgetown University Hospital saw all of the military donors, and in a year, we did 140 of these compared to the hospital that did the second most, which did 23,” Dr. Bracho said. “People in the military have been very generous in being donors.”

It is a common misconception that the procedure is extremely painful. Donors are under anesthesia and don’t feel anything during the procedure, Dr. Bracho said. Donors usually experience only mild soreness in their lower backs for a few days. Most people are up and walking the same day, are back to their normal routine after a week, and after two weeks have no symptoms at all, he said.

“My pain is his gain,” said Mr. Speanburg, referring to the 10-year-old boy. “I’m just happy that I could help him in this way.”

Anyone interested in being added to the NMDP registry or would like more information on the program, can visit www.marrow.org/.