How You Can Help?

1. How You Can Help?

2. Donating Bone Marrow • Be The Match Registry® is the donor registry operated by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). We’ve been helping patients receive the transplants they need for more than 25 years. • Be The Match offers people the unique opportunity to help a patient by donating bone marrow or umbilical cord blood. Thousands of patients with blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma, sickle cell and other life-threatening diseases depend on Be The Match to find a match.

3. SWAB + DNA = SAVE A LIFE • If you are 18 – 44, step up now and join. You are ten times more likely to be called to donate. Swab your cheek. Save a life. • Over 10,000 patients need a marrow transplant. Only half receive one • Why are younger donors preferred? If you are between the ages of 18 and 44, patients especially need you. When more than one potential donor is a good HLA match for a patient, doctors will also consider other factors, including the donor’s age. Research shows that cells from younger donors lead to more successful transplants. That's because younger donors produce more and higher-quality cells than older donors.

4. What is a bone marrow transplant? A: Bone marrow transplant is a life-saving treatment for people with blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma, sickle cell and other life-threatening diseases. First, patients undergo chemotherapy and sometimes radiation to destroy their diseased marrow. Then a donor's healthy blood-forming cells are given directly into the patient's bloodstream, where they can begin to function and multiply. • For a patient's body to accept these healthy cells, the patient needs a donor who is a close match. Seventy percent of patients do not have a donor in their family and depend on the Be The Match Registry to find an unrelated bone marrow donor or umbilical cord blood.

5. How do I use the registration kit to collect a cheek cell sample?A. When you join the registry, you will use our registration kit to give a swab of cheek cells. We will tissue type the sample you provide and use the results to match you to patients. • If you join in person at a donor registry drive, the Be The Match representatives can explain how to use the swab kit. If you join online, you will receive your kit in the mail. Instructions are included in your kit. You can also find detailed instructions, including an animation showing how to use the swabs, in our online Cheek Swab Guide.

6. Does race or ethnicity affect matching?A: Racial and ethnic heritage are very important factors. Patients are most likely to match someone of their own race or ethnicity. Today, there simply aren't enough registry members of diverse racial and ethnic heritage. Adding more diverse members increases the likelihood that all patients will find a life-saving match. • Members of these backgrounds are especially needed: • Black or African American • American Indian or Alaska Native • Asian, including South Asian • Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander • Hispanic or Latino • Multiple race • Q: What is the donation process like?A: Adult donors may be asked to donate in one of two ways: • Bone marrow donation is a surgical procedure in which liquid marrow is withdrawn from the back of the donor's pelvic bones using special, hollow needles. General or regional anesthesia is always used for this procedure, so donors feel no needle injections and no pain during marrow donation. Most donors feel some pain in their lower back for a few days afterwards. • Peripheral blood cell (PBSC) donation involves removing a donor's blood through a sterile needle in one arm. The blood is passed through a machine that separates out the cells used in transplants. The remaining blood is returned through the other arm.

7. Donating Blood(video) • Every minute of every day, someone needs blood. That blood can only come from a volunteer donor, a person like you who makes the choice to donate. There is no substitute for your donation.

8. Currently only 3 out of every 100 people in America give blood. • In the state of Georgia 16 years olds are allowed to donate blood with an id and signed permission form. In general, blood donors must... • Be in general good health. • Be at least 17 years old in most states (in some states 16 years old with parental consent). • Weigh at least 110 pounds. • Have not donated blood in the last 56 days.

9. The ABO Blood Group System • There are four major blood groups determined by the presence or absence of two antigens – A and B – on the surface of red blood cells: • Group A – has only the A antigen on red cells (and B antibody in the plasma) • Group B– has only the B antigen on red cells (and A antibody in the plasma) • Group AB – has both A and B antigens on red cells (but neither A nor B antibody in the plasma) • Group O – has neither A nor B antigens on red cells (but both A and B antibody are in the plasma)

10. RECIPIENT DONOR

12. Organ Donation • 114,903 people are waiting for an organ • 18 people will die each day waiting for an organ • 1 organ donor can save up to 8 lives • Last year alone, organ donors made more than 28,000 transplants possible. Another one million people received cornea and other tissue transplants that helped them recover from trauma, bone damage, spinal injuries, burns, hearing impairment and vision loss

13. Organ donation is the surgical process of providing one or more organs to be used for transplantation into another person. Organ donors can be deceased or living • Enrolling as a Donor: The altruistic process of donation begins when people perform the simple act of indicating their consent to be a donor by enrolling in their state's donor registry. Most often this happens when obtaining or renewing a driver's license or by going on-line for those state registries that have an Internet registration capacity. Most people also tell their family they want to be a donor so their family member can support their decision when needed. Signing up to be a donor usually takes place many years before donation becomes a possibility.

14. What is Brain Death? • Testing for Brain Death: When the medical team has exhausted all possible lifesaving efforts and the patient is not responding, a physician will perform a series of tests, usually on multiple occasions, to determine if brain death has occurred. This is usually done by a neurosurgeon or neurologist in compliance with accepted medical practice and state law. Patients who are brain dead have no brain activity and cannot breathe on their own. Brain death is not coma. Brain death is death.

15. Tipton-Smith Family • The Tipton-Smith Family consisted of 4 people: Faith, single mother, Ransom, Missy, and Emily. Faith worked long and hard at buying a home for her children in 2005, and the unimaginable happened...it was burnt to the ground! They lost EVERYTHING • Isn't it the saying, "When it Rains it Pours!!"? Well, for this family it did, because three months after their house burnt down Ransom, Missy, and their friend Alex were in a fatal car accident. Missy escaped alive, but Ransom and Alex did not. They died at the young age of 16!

16. Missy & Ransom's Story 2008 Seventeen-year-old Missy Tipton was a high school senior and captain of the Cherokee High School cheerleading squad, volunteers at a nursing home, serves as a junior coach for the Cherokee Warriors which consists of 8-to-9-year-old cheerleaders and maintains a full school load. Missy is also a donor sister. It was two years ago that the family’s home burned down. A few months later, Missy, her older brother Ransom and a close friend were riding in a car to get something to eat. Then it happened, a terrible automobile accident claimed the life of Ransom and their friend. Missy was the lone survivor. Missy is proud of Ransom’s decision to be an organ donor, and glad her family followed through with his decision. Five people received life-saving transplants because of Ransom. Her family was selected by ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and their dream home was completed in early 2007. The program aired in March 2007 and inspired people throughout the country to sign up as designated organ and tissue donors. (fire)

17. To the right is a painting by Ransom's heart recipient, Rachel Ball 19. This painting now hangs in the new home of the Tipton-Smith family, in memory of Ransom, and in honor of the gift he gave...the gift of life!