Louisiana: Woman survives transplant, dances with her donor on her wedding day

Hillary Husband to share her story with Congress, asking for Nationwide Donor Job Safety

RUSTON, La. (NMDP/KTVE/KARD) — When Hillary Husband was simply 14-years-old, a freshman in highschool, she was recognized with leukemia. Her battle with most cancers would proceed with three relapses over seven years.

“At that time, my solely likelihood for survival was a bone marrow transplant,” Hillary Husband stated. “I didn’t have a member of the family as a match, so we hoped and prayed to discover a donor.”

Due to the Nationwide Marrow Donor Program (NMDP)/Be The Match, Husband discovered her match and the bone marrow transplant saved her life. Seven years later, she received to satisfy her nameless donor in individual, on one of the vital particular occasions of her life, her marriage ceremony weekend.

“We first met proper earlier than our rehearsal dinner. However the spotlight and a second I’ll at all times cherish was getting to bop at my marriage ceremony, with the one who saved my life,” Husband recalled. 

There was additionally a candy coincidence.

“I couldn’t imagine it, however we share the identical marriage ceremony day. He was additionally married on February thirteenth,” she stated. “It felt meant to be.”

Husband is making ready to share her story with Congress as a part of a digital fly-in hosted by NMDP/Be The Match on Might 17 and 18. The aim is to advocate for laws to create a nationwide job safety for bone marrow donors. It might permit folks, in any U.S. state, to take as much as 40 non-consecutive hours of unpaid depart to donate, with out risking their jobs.

“I can’t think about if my donor needed to say ‘no’ as a result of he couldn’t get off work. This might have ended my life,” Husband stated. 

“Donor depart simply makes frequent sense and it’s an awesome factor to get finished. There isn’t a fiscal impression or funding requirement. We’re merely asking employers to provide an individual day without work, simply 40 hours, to allow them to save a life,” stated NMDP/Be The Match Chief Coverage Officer Brian Lindberg. 

This laws would have minimal to no price to employers. It might not require workers to take their established paid day without work or sick depart, and it could not require employers to pay for depart to donate. It might merely make sure the donor’s job can be protected whereas they’re concerned within the donation course of.

Donor depart time could embody conferences with a donation coordinator, offering blood samples, a bodily examination, injections of a pre-donation treatment administered over 5 days for many donors, journey to the donation website, finishing the donation, and a brief restoration interval (which varies by donation sort and donor). Forty p.c of donors will journey through the donation course of.

Nationwide donor depart laws would additionally assist shut the donor hole for under-represented populations on the registry, together with ethnic and racial minorities. Sufferers are matched by their genetic background, which suggests sufferers and donors often share the identical race and ethnicity. Sadly, the chance a affected person has a completely matched donor on the registry varies from 79% for white sufferers to simply 29% for Black sufferers. 

“We should change this actuality. I’m taking a stand in order that others could be as lucky as me to search out their life-saving match who can say sure,” Husband stated.

About Nationwide Marrow Donor Program (NMDP)/Be The Match®

For folks with life-threatening blood cancers similar to leukemia and lymphoma, a remedy exists. Nationwide Marrow Donor Program (NMDP)/Be The Match connects sufferers with their donor match for a life-saving marrow or wire blood transplant and works to establish and eradicate monetary and different boundaries confronted by these sufferers. NMDP additionally supplies sufferers and their households one-on-one help, schooling, and steerage earlier than, throughout, and after transplant.