A 45-year-old Salina man who was diagnosed with leukemia in November is being honored by a bone marrow registration drive Saturday being held at his church.

This is open to the whole community we want to stress that, said Linda Ourada, a member of the health ministry committee at St. Mary Queen of the Universe Catholic Church Parish Center, 230 E. Cloud. The drive will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the parish center.

Its possible that Phong Vos sister is a match for him, said Vos wife, Mary Pham.

More blood work is planned to determine if the match is close enough. In the meanwhile, the effort to sign up possible donors for Vo or anyone else who needs a bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cell donation is planned.

Pam Welsh, of Salina, said that more than a decade ago, she had her cheek swabbed during a bone marrow registration drive when a Bennington woman needed a match. She said she was called about a year later and told she was one of three people who were a possible match for a patient. She said she went to Salina Regional Health Center to have blood drawn for further testing.

I was given a choice if I wanted to continue in the process, she said. There was never any pressure.

She said that after the blood tests showed she was a good match for the patient, a nurse came to her house to give her shots to boost her stem cell count. Then she and a friend drove to a Wichita hospital, where she underwent an outpatient procedure during which her blood was drawn from one arm and passed through a machine that filtered out blood stem cells before the blood was returned to her other arm. Welsh said the procedure took one day, and then she took the next day off to recover. All expenses were paid by DKMS, an international organization that fights blood cancer and blood disorders, she said.

She said she found out that her blood was given to a 55-year-old man with some form of leukemia. She was told he was still alive when DKMS contacted her for a five-year checkup.

Although she never met him, Welsh said that for her there was a huge reward in knowing that I was able to help this man knowing that I gave him more years.

Its just a good feeling, she said.

Pham said Vo started feeling ill in October and has since undergone chemotherapy at Via Christi Hospital in Wichita and the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City. However, the leukemia has persisted.

Pham, who works for Schwans, has lived in Salina since her grandparents and an aunt, who had lived here since 1975, acted as her sponsors when she immigrated from Vietnam about 21 years ago. She met Vo, who moved here in the late 1990s, at work, and they were married at St. Marys. They have four sons, ages 11, 11, 10 and 8, who have missed their father during his long hospital stays.

When my husband got sick, I was panicked, and I was like, What do I need to do? I dont know what to do, Pham said. Soon she was told about DKMS, which will attempt to match potential donors who register at the Salina drive with Vo and other patients.

The bone marrow registration process for DKMS is simple, said Linda Ourada, who is helping to organize the event.

Its not like drawing blood, Ourada said. People get this mixed up with a blood drive. Theres no blood involved.

A swab is taken from the inside of the cheek, which is then sent for DNA analysis and entered into a global donor computer registry that already includes information about 7 million potential donors.

Every day in the United States, there are 14,000 people waiting for this blood stem cell donation, and only 30 percent get a family match, so that leaves 70 percent out there looking for a suitable donation from someone like us, Ourada said.

Ourada said that in 2012, more than 250 people registered and nine potential matches were contacted for further testing during a bone marrow drive at the church to honor a St. Louis family with Salina ties who had four boys with a rare form of blood cancer.

There is no cost to register as a donor, although monetary donations are being accepted to cover the approximately $65 in costs associated with registering each possible donor.

Potential donors must be between the ages of 18 and 55, in general good health and be willing to donate should their marrow be matched with a person who needs it. Further details about weight and height requirements or other limiting factors can be found at dkmsamericas.org.

The donation process may be accomplished one of two ways, depending on the patients needs. The preferred method is a blood transfusion, but for some patients, an actual bone marrow graft is necessary. The marrow is harvested through a hollow needle from a hip bone in an outpatient surgical procedure.

Bone marrow could be used to treat blood cancers, anemias, genetic disorders and other life-threatening ailments.

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Bone marrow registration drive planned to honor Salina man - Salina Journal (subscription)

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