Receiver and bone marrow donor Austin Carr wants to inspire others to donate



[ad_1]

Saints Wide Receiver Austin Carr was a freshman at Northwestern University when he got the buffered cheek to become a bone marrow donor, joining Be The Match, one of the largest bone marrow registries in the world.

He was one of the 20 football players to have joined the registry, including his roommate of the time, Mathew Micucci.

A little more than two years later, in November 2015, he received a call informing him that he could be a potential partner. A month later, he discovered that he had paired a person with a blood stem cell donation, while only one of the 430 registry members was becoming a donor.

Sports Illustrated detailed his journey from his registration to his meeting with Roy Coe, a retired locomotive engineer who had received his stem cells to treat his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, during Super Bowl week plus. early this year.

Carr continued his efforts as a defender and promoted the Be The Match registry and the need to diversify the donor list. He met two patients, Camille Wiliams and Jasmine Sewell Price, during the Bayou Classic last weekend at an event sponsored by Be The Match. Price is suffering from bone cancer and has been trying to find a bone marrow donor for over three years.

At Thursday's (November 29th) meeting against the Dallas Cowboys, Carr will be wearing her Be The Match crampon shoes, with the goal of encouraging fans to join and diversify the bone marrow donor registry. currently has about 19 million registered donors worldwide.

Minorities are less likely to find matched bone marrow donors. This mom hopes to change that.

"I am very passionate about encouraging other people to sign up for the Be The Match registry because it's a simple way to save someone's life." For me, making this decision was a matter of faith and loving my neighbor as myself, "Carr said in a statement. "I thought that if someone I loved was fighting cancer and needed a transplant, I would like a stranger to step up and give them some money. hope and a second chance in life. "

He added that he hoped to particularly inspire his African-American and Hispanic fans to diversify the register.

This is because, according to Be The Match's statistics, the risk of finding a bone marrow match varies from 23 to 77%.

In 2017, Be the Match has participated in nearly 6,100 stem cell transplants of the blood (marrow) and cord blood. Approximately 12,000 patients are diagnosed with life-threatening blood cancers, such as leukemia and lymphoma in the United States. Minorities are extremely disadvantaged in their ability to find a match. Only 4% of potential adult donors aged 18 to 44 are African American, 7% are Hispanic and 3% are multiracial. Native Americans and Alaska natives represent only 0.7% of registered donors.

To learn more about Be the Match and to join the registry, click here.

To learn more about Jasmine Sewell Price's search for a bone marrow, click here.

Maria Clark talks about immigration, health, doctors, patients and health care in Louisiana for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Contact her at [email protected]. Or follow her on Twitter at @ MariaPClark1.

[ad_2]

Source link