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Bradford man donates blood-forming cells in effort to help out others
By JOELLEN CHESNUT
Era Reporter
joellen@bradfordera.com
A Bradford man who registered with the HLA Registry more than a decade ago finally had the chance to help someone this year.
Kevin Kelly, 42, donated blood-forming cells in a procedure called a peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donation. Due to patient confidentiality, he does not even know who received his donation, other than it was a 26-year-old male. The man suffers from Thalassemia Major, a genetic defect that results in anemia.
Kelly, his wife, Maria, and his mother-in-law all registered in 1994.
“My wife is originally from Kane and they were doing a drive at the school. She asked if we were interested, so we went and signed up,” Kelly commented.
The process Kelly went through is known as Apheresis and does not involve surgery. A donor’s blood is taken out, put through a machine and separated and the blood-forming cells are collected. The rest of the blood is then returned to the donor.
The process took eight hours over a two-day period and took place in October 2008.
Prior to the actual procedure, the process to determine compatibility and to prepare the donor for the transplant is very involved. Kelly noted the process actually began two years ago.
“I had the first bloodwork done two years ago. I didn’t hear anything for awhile. Then they called back earlier this year and said the patient was ready to go through with it,” Kelly explained. “I had to go for more extensive bloodwork. They sent test tubes to Bradford Hospital and they took the blood. There were nine tubes of blood taken. A short time after that, I got a call saying it was a match.”
Once the go-ahead was given, Kelly had to receive a set of 15 shots, three a day over a period of five days. The injections were of Filgrastim, a drug that increases the number of blood-forming cells in the bloodstream by drawing them out of the bone marrow.
Kelly explained the first and last shots were administered at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., with the shots in between administered in Bradford by a Community Nurse.
HLA Registry provided a limousine from Buffalo Limousine Service to transport Kelly to and from Roswell each time a visit was necessary. All costs for the tests, shots and procedure were also covered.
After Kelly’s procedure, HLA did a follow-up a week later and a month later, with plans for further follow-up phone calls at six months and one year.
Kelly explained that during the one-month follow-up, HLA also followed up on the recipient and was allowed to ask two questions Those questions were whether the recipient’s cells grafted with Kelly’s cells and whether the recipient was in satisfactory condition. Both answers were yes.
When asked if Kelly would be interested in donating again, his response was, “Yes, I didn’t mind it at all. It only left me with a bruised arm, because the second day of the transplant, toward the end, the needle infiltrated my arm. That was my only side effect.”
Kelly noted that if this recipient were to require another transplant in the future he might be called on again. Also, if he matched another patient he could be asked to donate. Both options were fine with him.
His two children, Ashlyn, 12, and Alex, 9, thought what their father did was impressive.
“They thought I was a hero,” Kelly said.
According to the Web site, the HLA Registry Foundation, based in New Jersey, assists patients with potentially fatal blood diseases such as Leukemia and Aplastic Anemia, finds compatible unrelated donors for lifesaving marrow transplants and helps patients and their families raise funds for HLA tissue typing.
Kelly is the son of Veronica Kelly of Bradford and the late Harry Kelly Jr. His wife is the daughter of Ray and Donna Ely of Kane.
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