UT Student Needs Your Blood [Call To Action]

We here at Austinist are asking for your help.

In a story that could only be described as utterly heartbreaking, Josh Talbot, a junior Radio-TV-Film student at UT, is in desperate need of both white blood cells and a bone marrow donor. What started out as a case of mononucleosis in September has morphed into a very rare complication from Epstein-Barr called Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH). We’ll spare you a long-winded medical dissertation and sum it up for you: HLH overproduces infection-fighting white blood cells and results in organ failure. HLH can be fatal. Though HLH is not cancer, treatment protocol calls for chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant.

Josh completed chemo but recently developed fungal pneumonia and needs multiple white blood cell transplants to fight the pneumonia and strengthen his immune system for the transplant. It is a delicate balancing act to get Josh’s pneumonia cured when his condition is already being compromised by an immunosuppressive disorder. The ultimate goal is to get enough blood donors to treat the pneumonia, get Josh off dialysis and receive the transplant. Unfortunately, white blood platelets are running low and a donor match has not been found yet. That is where you come in.

With the holiday season just around the corner, we hope you strongly consider Josh’s situation and give the gift of life by donating blood and getting registered as a potential bone marrow donor. (No blood test needed, only a simple cheek swab!) There will be a platelet drive here in Austin on November 29th at IBM on 11501 Burnet Rd with times available at 9AM, 11AM and 1PM. Please contact Pam Spann at
pspann(at)us(dot)ibm(dot)com to schedule an appointment.

There will also be a drive on December 22 at Grace Covenant Church at 183 & 360 (times available at 10AM, Noon and 2PM); Ms. Spann is the contact for the December drive also. If you can't make one of these drives, you can call The Blood & Tissue Center of Central Texas at 206-1231 to set up an appointment for platelet donation (be sure to tell them its for Josh). The platelet donation process can take from 45 minutes to 2 hours.

The Bone Marrow Registry Drive will take place on UT’s Campus December 1 – 5 at Flawn Academic Center. If you’re not a match for Josh, your information will be registered in the National Bone Marrow Registry which could help one of the other 6,000 patients still looking for a match.

See the platelet drive flyer after the jump...

Bonita Sarita/Flickr

Contact the author of this article or email tips@austinist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By austinist_keb in News on November 20, 2008 10:27 AM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Jooley Ann

I donated platelets at the last drive, and it was a very positive experience. The folks running the drive were terrific. It took me about 2 hours all told, most of which was spent on the machine. If you have *any* time to do this, it means so much -- and you won't feel any lasting effects at all from losing one little bagful of platelets.

Also, please know that 80% or so of matched bone marrow donors end up donating in a relatively easy process that is similar to platelet donation (called apheresis); only 20% or so go through the process in which cells are harvested directly from the bone, and for the latter they put you under completely.

Thank you for posting this, KEB!