Athletic training students volunteered today at a bone marrow drive on the Missouri State University campus called Rally For Allie. Allie A. is a sophomore and softball player at MSU and was diagnosed with AML (acute myeloid leukemia) in September, 2014. Since then she has begun aggressive chemo treatments and doctors told her that she will need a bone marrow transplant. Unfortunately, transplant matches are very difficult to find. As a result, the MSU softball team organized a campus-wide bone marrow drive trying to find a match for Allie or any of the thousands of others in the country in need of bone marrow donations.
The athletic training students volunteered services to assist in registration, preparation, and swabbing to gather donor samples. Once the mouth swabs are collected, the sample gets sent off to the Delete Blood Cancer Organization. Once processed, the donor’s information gets put into the system and if there is a match with someone in need of a transfusion, the donor is contacted. For more information on registration to become a bone marrow donor, please visit www.deletebloodcancer.org.
The Sports Medicine and Athletic Training department is proud to have so many caring and compassionate students who volunteer for good causes such as this one throughout the year.