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John Oppenheimer
John Oppenheimer donating last year
NEW?HAVEN >> When he?s not anchoring the Yale football team?s offensive line, John Oppenheimer is busy saving a man?s life.
On Tuesday, for the second time in the past six months, Oppenheimer, 21, will donate bone marrow to a 41-year-old man in Europe who has leukemia. They have no personal connection to each other, except for the life-sustaining similarity of the marrow in their bones.
A day after making this latest donation, Oppenheimer will head to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on behalf of the nation?s largest bone marrow donation registry.
?I?ve only been to D.C. twice, once with the team and once on an eighth grade field trip,? said Oppenheimer, a senior this fall who plays center for the Elis. He?s from Menlo Park, Calif.
?I hope my story can make a difference. It?s something I?m pretty proud of,? he said.
Like other members of the football, field hockey and ice hockey programs at Yale, Oppenheimer has been active with the Mandi Schwartz Marrow Donor Registration Drive on campus. The annual drive is named after a Yale women?s ice hockey player who died of leukemia in 2011.
During his freshman year at Yale, Oppenheimer signed up to be a donor himself. The process is a simple one, involving a couple of swabs inside the mouth to collect genetic material.
The Yale registration drive is part of the national Be The Match Registry, which has 10 million donors across the United States.
According to Chad Ramsey, director of legislative relations for Be The Match, about 12,000 Americans with leukemia, lymphoma and other conditions need bone marrow transplants every year. Finding a good match isn?t easy.
In Oppenheimer?s case, he got the call last November that his marrow was a match for a 41-year-old man in Europe with leukemia. Oppenheimer didn?t hesitate before agreeing to help. Continued...
?I put myself in his shoes,? he said. ?I?d hope and pray the person decided to go through with it.?
There are two ways to donate bone marrow. One is to have cells removed by a needle in the hip. The other is the way Oppenheimer did it, in January. He took a drug that stimulates blood cell production, then sat in a hospital bed for six hours.
?They put a needle in one arm and my blood went through a machine that separated the cells they needed. They put the blood back into you through a needle in your other arm,? Oppenheimer said. ?It felt completely fine. I brought a computer and watched some movies.?
Privacy rules prevent Oppenheimer from knowing his marrow recipient?s name or his medical progress. However, about a month ago he got another call asking him to make a second donation to the same man.
That?s what he?ll be doing Tuesday.
?I definitely feel connected to him,? Oppenheimer said.
As for the lobbying effort in Washington, Ramsey said the federal government?s recent sequestration cuts will remove $3 million from the National Marrow Donor Program, meaning that 20,000 fewer people will be added to the registry. Federal funding defrays costs associated with the lab work to add donors to the registry.
Oppenheimer will be part of a group of donors, recipients and others who will meet with members of Congress to push for support.
?The Connecticut delegation has been very supportive in the past,? Ramsey said.
Call Jim Shelton at 203-789-5664.
Source: http://nhregister.com/articles/2013/07/16/news/doc51e588812f9f0627682607.txt
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