After signing up thousands of donors, 'bone marrow guy' gets to make his own donation

There are almost a half-million active-duty soldiers in the U.S. Army. But across this entire organization, with outposts across the world, Spc. Christian Sutton is the single, solitary soldier tasked with his particular job. And once he completes it, the position disappears.

Sutton has an official title, but his customized jacket says it all – he's the bone marrow guy.

His job is to create an infrastructure to encourage soldiers to register to become potential stem cell donors – to donate cells to someone with a blood cancer or disorder, like leukemia, sickle cell disease or aplastic anemia, and change that person’s life forever.

And recently, he got to be the one making that life-changing donation.

“I lost my mind,” he said recently, recalling the moment when he got the call to say that he’d been identified as a match for someone. “It’s really significant for me, being able to donate and save a life, especially while doing that as part of my job – being able to walk the walk.”

“It’s really significant for me, being able to donate and save a life, especially while doing that as part of my job – being able to walk the walk.”

Spc. Christian Sutton

Even more significant – Sutton, who is based at Fort Bliss in Texas, would be making his donation at MUSC Health, the same hospital where his mother died of Hodgkin lymphoma in 2004.

Stacey W. Newton, R.N., a blood and marrow transplant donor coordinator at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center, said the team typically works with one to three donors each week. All have their own reasons for donating, but Sutton’s story especially touched her.

The blood and marrow team works closely with patients throughout the transplant process, from finding a matching donor to post-transplant care. It’s part of the reason that MUSC was recently listed as one of 12 transplant centers across the U.S. that performed better than expectations.

Still, the wait to find a matching donor can be nerve-wracking. Expanding the pool of donors and encouraging more people from racial and ethnic minority groups to register would mean more patients would find a match.

Returning to Charleston

As Sutton boarded the plane for Charleston, he learned for the first time of a website that his grandmother had made documenting his mother’s cancer journey. He pored over the journal entries and photos – even replicating some when he arrived at the hospital. As he sat in his hospital bed, a machine steadily drawing stem cells from his blood, he noted that he was the same age as his mother had been when she died.

 

Sutton grew up in Sumter, raised by his grandparents, and attended Central Carolina Technical College before joining the Army. In the Army, he was trained to work on satellite systems. One night, he randomly found himself at a punk concert and saw a Punk Rock Saves Lives table where people were registering to be donors.

“I didn’t know you could do that in a bar,” he said.

Intrigued, he reached out and eventually made his way to Salute to Life, the U.S. Department of Defense bone marrow registry. From there, he began organizing drives. He soon realized, though, that a defined program with a regular schedule of briefing soldiers would be more sustainable and outlast any single individual’s passion for the project.

“This was just a hobby I picked up that got bigger and bigger – to the point where my base commander and I thought, ‘All right, we have a responsibility to see this opportunity through because of the impact it could have,’” he said.

The military is an ideal population to register to donate, he said. The best donors are young adults under the age of 40 who are in good health.

“You can get them all in a box and brief them at a wide scale, for free, at no cost to the taxpayer,” he said.

 

He envisions a program where every soldier gets the briefing at basic training, again annually, once again before deployment and again upon return.

“I have the program fully up and running at five Army bases, but we have it in small parts on every base,” he said.

He has his own small army of almost 60 volunteers who are helping to implement the program from California to Belgium.

How stem cell transplant works

Stem cell transplants can treat more than 75 blood disorders or cancers, according to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), the civilian stem cell registry. Stem cells are the basis for all the different types of blood cells – red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets – so replacing someone’s cancerous or diseased cells with healthy stem cells from a donor means a completely fresh start.

Patients first look for matches among family. But the donor’s stem cells must match at least five or six of the recipient’s human leukocyte antigens, proteins that are found on cells to tell the immune system that these cells belong there. That means that many patients must rely on a stranger’s donation, sometimes from across the world.

Registering to be a donor is easy – it requires only a cheek swab. And the majority of those who register will never be asked to donate because they won’t come up as a match for a patient.

Originally, donating meant undergoing a surgical procedure to remove cells from the bone marrow – thus the term “bone marrow transplant,” which many still use.

 

Today, though, 90% of donors use the peripheral blood stem cell donation process, which is more like donating blood. First, donors, like Sutton, get injections of a special medication that prompts the body to produce extra stem cells. Then, during the donation process, a machine removes blood from one arm, separates and collects the stem cells and returns the remaining blood through the other arm. This process usually takes about five hours.

“Recovery for a stem cell donation is actually pretty quick,” Newton said. “Usually they feel back to normal within one to two days. The only restriction we tell them is to take it easy and listen to your body. And no heavy lifting for 24 hours. Drink plenty of fluids. And then, usually, they feel back to normal within a day or two after the donation.”

Sutton was ready to go. He’s a man with a mission, after all. “My goal is to make the Army the No. 1 source of bone marrow donors in the United States.”

Become a stem cell donor

• Learn more about the importance of stem cell donations at NMDP.org.
  
  
• Civilians can go to NMDP, and active-duty military, dependents and civilian DOD employees can go to Salute to Life to begin the process.
  
  
• If you are a match, NMDP will cover the cost of transportation, lodging, meals, child care and pet care so that you can donate worry-free.
  
  

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