Alex Plattner is 22 years old, and he saved a life.
The UF mathematics and biochemistry senior donated his bone marrow to a 52-year-old stranger who suffered from myelodysplastic syndrome, or preleukemia, which can weaken the immune system and lower blood cell counts.
“It’s very rare to have the chance to directly save someone’s life like that,” Plattner said. “It’s just a special bond that you create when you do something like this.”
Plattner is a shift leader in the third annual SWAB2SAVE Bone Marrow Donor Registration Drive run by Shands at UF’s Footprints Buddy and Support Program. The drive was from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m on the Plaza of the Americas, the Reitz Union Colonnade and at Shands Atrium on Tuesday and continues today. It’s part of a greater effort by the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation to add bone marrow donors to an international registry.
This year, Footprints plans to match last year’s registrations, which totaled about 1,000 registrations on UF’s campus, said Angelique Boutzoukas, a 20-year-old interdisciplinary studies junior for basic biological and medical sciences and coordinator for the drive.
Throughout the last three years, drives at UF have added more than 2,600 potential donors to the registry, and of those, 19 have matched people suffering from a variety of blood cancers.
The chance of being a match is 1 in 1,000, which is how the numerical goal of the drive is determined, Boutzoukas said.
Volunteers for the drive, about 150 of whom come from a variety of UF organizations, perform a mouth swab test on potential donors to collect their DNA, she said. They send those swabs to be tested in laboratories, and matches are contacted for further testing to ensure the donor is a perfect match.
Boutzoukas said people often have misconceptions about the donation procedure.
“It’s a lot easier to save someone’s life than you might think,” Boutzoukas said.
For Dana Marra, a 23-year-old English junior and potential donor who signed up Tuesday, the opportunity to help others overcomes her fear of the procedure.
“I am afraid to do it,” she said, “but the people who need it are probably more afraid than I am.”