Donor Shares More Than Marrow : He Hasn’t Met the Recipient, But Parallels In Their Lives Have Him Spooked

“I wanted to give you the good news and to show you your gift has given me a new chance at life. Even though it is a long road to recovery I still treasure every day as if it were my first of my new life.”

--Letter from the recipient of Terry Judge’s bone marrow

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Terry Judge finds it eerie. It wasn’t just that his bone marrow was found to be a perfect match for a leukemia patient, despite very heavy odds against such a match.

Nor was it that the man he knows only as his “special friend” is close to being Judge’s genetic clone.

What spooked him were the other parallels in their lives.

“I could have been [the person] seeking the bone marrow donor,” said Judge, a sheriff’s lieutenant and watch commander at the Pitchess jail who is also a Palmdale city councilman, in an interview.

That realization haunts Judge still, 10 months after he became the 121st person in Southern California to donate bone marrow to an unrelated person.

Judge’s “special friend” sensed the irony as well:

“I have two sisters and four brothers, none of which matched in the blood work. . . . There were three blood drives and even a Girl Scout car wash for me. But without your gift I would not be here to write about it.”

Strict rules prohibit the two men from having formal contact or even knowing each other’s names until a year after the procedure. Any meeting after that must have full approval of both parties in advance.

The measures are intended to protect both donor and recipient, say officials of the American Red Cross, which coordinates the donor program.

They want to give the recipient time to heal and to prevent unscrupulous potential donors from taking advantage of the sick person’s desperation and perhaps demanding a high price for the marrow. They also want to protect the donor, who might feel guilty if the marrow is rejected by the recipient’s body.

But Judge learned enough about the recipient through a letter exchange arranged by the Red Cross to give him pause.

Under the guidelines, the recipient was not allowed to give any clues to his identity, or reveal details such as where he lives and what he does for a living.

They are about the same age. Judge has been married 19 years, while the marrow recipient had been married 17. They each had daughters close in age. Judge even had a family member who died of cancer.

“I have been by touched so much by people . . . I don’t know.”

Marie Staie of the American Red Cross says she’s often struck by similarities between donors and recipients.

In photographs, some look alike, she said. Sometimes, they have the same hobbies: One pair vowed to go rock climbing together.

In another case, a donor bought a young girl who was receiving the bone marrow the exact Barbie doll set the child had requested after seeing it in a hospital gift shop. The two had never met and lived in different cities.

“Some donors like to believe that somewhere, along the line, the lines crossed,” Staie said.

It may happen a lot in Staie’s work, but it only happened to Judge once.

“It’s just incredible to me,” Judge said. “How is it that I ended up being the match?”

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Judge told his story in part to promote a bone marrow drive at Santa Clarita City Hall today from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. A second drive is set for Sunday at Tommy’s Drive-In Restaurant in Camarillo from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The test is a simple extraction of blood for analysis. No marrow is taken until a matchup is confirmed.

The drives were organized in part to help Blayke and Garrett LaRue, two Oxnard brothers afflicted with a rare blood disorder whose search for donors has prompted thousands to sign up with the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry.

Eight-month-old Blayke is undergoing treatment, and although a potential donor for Garrett is being tested in Finland, it remains unclear whether a transplant will be possible.

Fueled by this uncertainty and the need to bolster the registry, the drives have become crusades for local law enforcement leaders, responding to a plea from the boys’ grandfather, Ron LaRue, a lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood Division.

The odds, in some cases a million to one, prompted Judge to make a plea on behalf of the LaRue children. He knows the LaRues only from their photograph but felt a bond with them simply because their grandfather pulls criminals off the street and he locks them up.

“I wouldn’t know Lt. LaRue from anyone,” Judge says. “But you can’t help but look at the children and say, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ ”

On behalf of myself and family I want to sincerely thank you for your caring generous gift of life. You are truly a hero in a day and age when people have a hard time getting involved with others.

Judge had trouble getting through this letter, and three others sent by the recipient’s wife and two young children.

The word hero jumped off the page.

“I couldn’t say a whole lot. Leave it at that,” Judge says. “But I am thinking about him and his family.”

He squirmed in his creaky chair when asked about the donation. He clearly wished he were somewhere, anywhere else besides the desk beneath the massive Sheriff’s Department badge painted on the office wall.

Yes, he took the time to donate. Yes, he rose at dawn and slept on a cold hospital gurney for what seemed like a long time until some kind soul in white came over to give him “something to relax.” Yes, he had holes drilled into his hip bones to harvest the marrow. And yes, he couldn’t walk comfortably or bend over easily for weeks.

What, he wonders, is the big deal?

“What was my discomfort,” Judge says, “compared with what this patient faced?”

Save a life. Happens every day.