Scott Airman saves life with bone marrow donation

Published April 18, 2012
By Airman 1st Class Jake Eckhardt
375th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. -- Right now roughly 15,000 Americans are living with a life-threatening disease that can be cured by a donation of bone marrow. By the end of this year, more than 3,000 of those people will die waiting for a transplant.

One Airman from Scott Air Force Base recently had the chance to save one of those lives.

Staff Sgt. Casey Jensen, Airman Leadership School instructor, donated a part of his bone marrow March 29 at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington D.C., to save a 28-year-old woman who was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia.

"This was the second time I had gotten a phone call saying I could be someone's bone marrow match. There are so many people out there." he said. "I didn't believe that I would get picked until the day I did."

After he received the phone call from the C.W. Bill Young Department of Defense Marrow Donor Program telling him he could potentially be the person to save this woman's life, he had to be tested further to confirm that he was the best match.

Jensen flew to Washington D.C. for a day for blood-work, and a physical to make sure that he didn't have any medical conditions that would prevent him from donating, and to make sure he was physically able to go through with the procedure.

All the tests came back indicating he was fit for the procedure and that they were 98.5 percent sure that he was a match for the patient. To find out if he was a match, he was compared to every registered bone marrow donor in the world. He then flew to Washington D.C. again to donate March 28 for the actual bone marrow extraction.

"I was extraordinarily nervous," he said. "But as they were wheeling me in, I found out that I was ready. It was an overwhelming sense of joy. I was like 'OK, let's save a life.'"

To extract the bone marrow, the doctors stuck two needles through his lower back into his pelvic bone and created 25 holes on each side about the size of a tip of a pen.

Two hours later he woke up in the recovery room and was taken to his room to rest.

"Within about an hour, I got restless," he said. "I got up and started walking around. To my surprise, although it was a little stiff and a little weird, as long as I took my time, I could walk around and in fact the doctors encouraged it."

Aside from a slight discomfort, the instructor said it wasn't very painful.

"I don't really like medical stuff," he said. "I can watch my blood be taken, but that's about it. The fact is that it wasn't that painful. It was just uncomfortable."

Before he went through the procedure, he did some independent research to make sure it's what he wanted to do.

"I found out that this procedure, in no way, would help my body," he said. "They would be taking out a part of my immune system and implanting it in another person. I also found out that 10 days before she would get the bone marrow that doctors would have to kill off her immune system. That's 10 days that she would go without an immune system.

"Along with the dangers of going without an immune system for 10 days is the fact that her body might reject my bone marrow. Then her body would have no immune system for longer."

To go through with donating, Jensen had a lot of support from co-workers and family.

"I had so much support it was ridiculous," he said. "All the other instructors here supported me and the commandant, Master Sgt. Matzek, even came up to me and said, 'This is the greatest thing someone could ever do. You're giving someone life.'

"The folks in Washington D.C. let my parents come too, so there was support everywhere I went."

Donating and potentially saving this woman's life has influenced him to donate even more.

"They sent me a post-procedure questionnaire asking me, if needed, if I would be interested in donating blood, white blood cells, bone marrow or blood stem cells," he said. "I sent the form back saying that I'm 100 percent willing to donate."

To register to donate, visit www.dodmarrow.org/index.htm.