Stem cell donors may be a young cancer or blood disease patient’s only hope of a cure. Two Stanford Medicine Children’s Health nurses answered that call.
Jessica Brown and Lindsay Parkinson have a lot in common. They spend their days taking care of young patients as Stanford Children’s clinical nurses in the Bass Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases. They both felt a calling to go to nursing school. During their oncology rotations, they signed up to be part of a national stem cell donor registry. And this year, they both received calls telling them they matched with someone and could give a stranger a second chance at life.
“It was crazy,” Brown says. “What are the odds that not one, but two of us got contacted years after nursing school?”
Stem cell transplants are used to treat people with life-threatening blood cancers, immune disorders, blood diseases, and metabolic conditions. These transplants replace a patient’s immune system with a new one from a donor. Often, this approach is the patient’s only hope for a cure. But only about 30 percent of patients have a matching donor in their family, so many patients rely on the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) to find a match from a stranger to save their life.
Brown and Parkinson work with young cancer and stem cell transplant patients every day.
“Some of these patients have been battling their diagnoses for so long and may have given up hope because their prior course of treatment wasn’t working,” Brown says. “When they finally get a call that they found a matching stem cell donor, seeing that glimmer of hope and smile really moves me.”
When the nurses received their calls that they matched with patients, they jumped at the chance to help.
“I feel very lucky that it’s my job to be working with these patients because I understand how much this type of donation can change a patient’s life,” Parkinson says. “Our stem cell transplant patients at Stanford Children’s are anywhere from a 6-month-old baby to people in their late 20s. While I don’t know who I donated to, I think it’s meaningful to help start that process for someone and hope they have a happy and healthy life after.”
There are two types of donations patients can receive: peripheral blood stem cells or bone marrow.
On Sept. 9, 2024, Parkinson flew to Los Angeles to donate her bone marrow to the patient. She went through a surgical procedure where doctors drew liquid marrow from the back of her pelvic bone.
Brown, on the other hand, flew to Seattle in July for a peripheral blood stem cell donation. She was hooked up to two IVs for more than five hours while a machine separated out the blood-forming cells and returned the remaining blood to her.
This entire experience inspired the nurses to do more to raise awareness. They’ve been sharing their stories with friends and family, encouraging them to join.
“Signing up for the registry is super-easy,” Parkinson says. “It was a simple cheek swab. You never know at any point you could get a call to save a life.”
They also add that the more people from different backgrounds who sign up, the better the chances are for the patients to find their real-life superhero. Patients from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups face lower odds of finding a match in the donor registry—a problem that could be relieved with more diverse donors.
“Any and all people 18 to 40 years old can join the registry,” Brown adds. “Even if you never get contacted, there is one person out there who could be that lucky match for someone who’s waiting. Being able to give a piece of yourself to someone is such a humbling experience and gift that we’re able to do.”
