Unity woman touts importance, ease of donating stem cells

While attending a Goo Goo Dolls concert at the Palace Theater in 2016, Cassandra Nedelco of Unity didn’t think twice about getting her cheek swabbed at a booth run by nonprofit DKMS, an international group that seeks to match stem cell and bone marrow donors with patients in need.

It was nothing new for her: Nedelco, 33, had already signed up with a similar group called Be the Match when she’d turned 21, in hopes of being a donor match for her brother, Lucas.

Lucas was born with chronic granulomatous disease, an immunodeficiency condition that leaves people susceptible to serious infections by certain bacteria and fungi.

“The odds of being a match are very, very slim,” Nedelco said of her place on the bone marrow registry.

Her brother did eventually find a donor from British Columbia who matched nine points on a 10-point scale. He received a bone marrow transplant, attends college and is now working after spending much of his childhood in the hospital.

That’s why Nedelco never even hesitated when she got a call from DKMS in July, three years after the Goo Goo Dolls concert, alerting her that she was a match for a potential stem-cell recipient.

“I didn’t know anything about this man, but I’m sure he has people out there who are watching him suffer,” she said.

The week before Thanksgiving, Nedelco traveled to one of DKMS’ partner facilities for testing and, in early December, she began a series of injections that stimulated stem cell growth, then forced those stem cells out of her bone marrow and into her bloodstream.

DKMS officials took blood, separated out stem cells, white blood cells and plasma and Nedelco became a peripheral blood stem cell donor. Transplanted bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells help a recipient’s body generate blood cells following high-dose chemotherapy treatment for blood cancers like non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukemia, according to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

“I was in a lot of pain from the shots, but it’s just such a simple thing you can do to possibly save someone’s life,” she said.

Ultimately, DKMS harvested about 64 million stem cells from Nedelco, and on the day her brother turned 21 years old, Nedelco was able to call him to let him know that she was doing for someone else what she wasn’t able to do for him.

“It was great to sort of be able to give him that ‘gift’ on his birthday,” she said.

When Nedelco’s brother received his bone marrow transplant, he was not permitted to meet his donor until recently. In the same way, Nedelco will not have a chance to meet the recipient of her donation for several years, although the two can contact one another using DKMS as an intermediary.

“He’s probably still spending Christmas in the hospital but, hopefully, it works,” Nedelco said. “Stem cell donation works well for blood cancers, autoimmune, so many things. And it’s as easy as calling DKMS and ordering a kit, which they send for free.”