Arona’s Lauren Talicska is a match & a treasure to one boy fighting for his young life
Lauren Talicska, Director of Marketing for APRO member Arona Corporation, dba Arona Home Essentials, recently gave her second bone-marrow donation to a young boy with an aggressive form of leukemia – and is sharing her story to urge her rent-to-own colleagues to join the Be The Match Registry that paired her with her recipient.
“Just over four years ago, I went to dinner with a friend of my husband and his girlfriend, whom I was meeting for the first time,” Talicska begins. “She told me she had recently matched with a recipient with cancer, and donated peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) through Be The Match. I was amazed and inspired by her story, and just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I went to the Be The Match website the next day and requested a swab kit to officially join the registry.”
For patients with leukemia, lymphoma, and other life-threatening diseases, a bone-marrow or cord-blood transplant may be their best or only hope for a cure. According to Be The Match, 70% of patients in need of a transplant don’t have a fully matched donor within their family, so they depend upon Be The Match and its supporters to find a match to help save their life.
Years passed for Talicska with no word from Be The Match. But in October of last year, she got the call: She was a preliminary match for a young boy fighting an aggressive blood cancer.
“I have two young sons about the age of this boy, and there was no way I wasn’t going to do everything I could for him,” recalls Talicska. “I did additional blood-work and was told to expect to hear within 60 days whether I was a close enough match to help – so I was shocked to get a call just a couple of weeks later letting me know I was the closest match and best donor.”
Doctors determined the young patient’s best outcome would be from bone marrow harvested through surgery. Talicska underwent complete physicals, chest x-rays, even more bloodwork, and a series of informational sessions before her surgery date in December. The surgery took a little over three hours, harvesting 1.39 liters of healthy marrow from Talicska’s pelvic bone. The boy received those cells the following day.
“Recovery from the surgery was a little slower than I had expected,” Talicska notes. “But I worked from home, was back to most activities within two weeks, and within eight weeks, my body had naturally replaced all the cells I donated. That’s when I thought my transplant journey had ended.”
But then in April, Talicska got a text requesting another donation for the boy. She immediately agreed to doing whatever necessary to help him.
“This donation was different from my first one,” explains Talicska. “There are two types of donation: surgical and PBSC. This time was PBSC, which is non-surgical and much more common – 85 percent of Be The Match donations are PBSC. Leading up to this donation day, I took daily injections of a medication designed to increase my healthy blood cells. On harvest day, I was hooked up to a machine that took blood out of my arm, separated out all the ‘liquid gold,’ then returned the blood back into my body.”Talicska’s PBSC process took just over seven hours, and was much like donating blood or platelets. She was just getting her vital signs cleared to be released when a Be The Match rep showed up with a cooler ready to transfer her donation to the airport and on to her waiting recipient. Talicska was fully recovered and feeling fine within just a couple of days of her PBSC donation.
Since her first donation, Talicska has celebrated her 41st birthday, and her recipient has had a birthday, too – a birthday she helped him have.
“I hope to give him as many birthdays as I can,” affirms Talicska. “But many, many patients are still waiting and hoping to find the lifesaving match they need. Adding more registry members – especially with diverse ethnic backgrounds – increases the number of potential matches.
“As I went into my first donation, I was so anxious that something might go wrong to prevent me from donating,” she concludes. “Then I thought of my recipient and his family, and realized they had to be a million times more worried, because this little boy’s life hangs in the balance. Here your body is already producing these healthy cells – why wouldn’t you share them?”
If you’re between the ages of 18-40, committed to donating to any patient in need, and meet health guidelines, then you’re eligible for donation. Please visit BeTheMatch.org for further information or to join the registry.
Kristen Card has been a contributing writer for RTOHQ: The Magazine for more than 15 years.
