Caroline Kohls spent a blustery late March day in a hospital bed for nearly six hours, by choice. A 17-gauge needle fit securely in her left arm, funneling blood out of Kohls’ body to an apheresis machine, which separated out the stem cells before returning the altered blood into her right arm.
She would leave the procedure sore and tired, but otherwise fine. The person who needed her stem cells, however, was in much rougher shape.
“I saw all these people on social media meeting their stem donors or meeting their recipients,” says Kohls, a senior in the College of Nursing. “The joy that somebody could bring to someone else for doing such a small thing…I just figured that I might as well do it if I could give that joy to somebody.”
Kohls volunteered to be part of the National Marrow Donor Program, a nonprofit based near her home in Minnesota that connects cell donors with recipients. Participants submit a swab of DNA from their cheek cells to be put in a registry, which is then cross-checked against those who are suffering from blood-related illnesses. Donors can give bone marrow directly through a procedure requiring general anesthesia, or they can give stem cells like Kohls did.
People in need of stem cells can wait years for a match; even being a relative is not a guarantee of compatibility. However, Kohls discovered in February that she was a perfect match for a patient with blood cancer that needed them.
“There are so many people on the registry, and a lot of those people wait years for a stem cell match. It was crazy that it happened like this,” Kohls says.
Preparing for stem cell donation is no small feat. For five days leading up to the procedure, Kohls injected herself with Filgrastim, a bone marrow stimulant meant to increase the amount of stem cells in the blood. Her bones ached from the repeated injections.
“Giving my stem cells, sitting in the hospital bed for that long — it all gave me a lot more empathy for what my patients are feeling or thinking when they come to the hospital.”
Caroline Kohls, senior nursing student
While she waited for the procedure to finish, Kohls chatted with her mom, who flew to Madison from Minneapolis to be with her daughter.
“It was a great chance to see my mom because I had not seen her in a while. We got a chance to talk about life after college and all the things that come with that,” Kohls says with a laugh.
After graduation, Kohls will stay in Milwaukee to work for Ascension Columbia St Mary’s Hospital on a medical-surgical floor, with a particular focus on neurology and orthopedics. She merely needs to pass the NCLEX licensure exam after graduation before beginning a career as a registered nurse.
While donating stem cells has little to do with any question that will show up on the NCLEX, it did help Kohls gain a broader perspective on what it means to be a Marquette Nurse.
“This experience gave me such insight into being a patient in an unfamiliar situation,” Kohls says. “Giving my stem cells, sitting in the hospital bed for that long — it all gave me a lot more empathy for what my patients are feeling or thinking when they come to the hospital.”
Kohls does not yet know whether she will meet the person who receives her stem cells, nor whether that person will survive a transfusion. NMDP procedures specify that both parties wait at least a year before contacting one another. Kohls is hesitant, but open to the idea.
“If they want to reach out and talk, I would be happy to,” Kohls says. “But I wouldn’t reach out to them unless they reached out to me, because I don’t want them to feel as though they owe me anything.”
If you are interested in more information about joining the registry, go to NMDP’s website.
