Temple Resident Needs a Match

Jackie Rogers, a Houston native, has lived in Temple since 1986. She had a moving service called “Hire a Hubby” for over 12 years, when she began getting increasingly tired. The moving business was getting harder and harder for her, so she closed her business and went to work for Nextel in Temple.

After 9/11, Nextel held a blood drive for the Scott & White Blood Center and Jackie went to donate blood. As part of the blood donation process, a “mini-physical” is performed on all potential donors before they are allowed to donate. During this process, the blood donor staff noticed that Jackie’s hematocrit was extremely low and told her she could not give blood. They urged her to see her physician at once. “I went to donate blood to try to save someone else’s live, but the pre-donation physical probably saved mine instead,” said Jackie.

After several weeks of testing, she was diagnosed with myelodysplasia, which is a disease of the blood. It was determined by Jackie’s physician that she needed a stem cell transplant to cure her disease.

The first step was to test her relatives to see if they could be her match. Jackie has eight siblings and three children, but none of them had a close enough tissue type to be considered Jackie’s matched donor. She then turned to the National Marrow Donor Program to try and find a non-related individual somewhere in the world that could be her donor.

The National Marrow Donor Program has over five million people on the registry, but so far, no one has been identified as a close enough match for Jackie. “You don’t realize just how special and unique we all are until something like this happens,” said Jackie.

Several drives in central Texas are being held for Jackie as well as others searching for a match. Potential donors on the registry mean much more than numbers of volunteers — they represent hope and a chance for thousands of patients like Jackie that are searching for a special match!

Are you already on the registry? Please make sure your address and phone number is current at all times so we can find you quickly if you should be identified as a potential match. Contact the Scott & White Marrow Donor Program at 888-724-2811 or the National Marrow Donor Program at 800-MARROW-2 to update your information.

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