Jocelyn McGlynn
Jocelyn McGlynn is a fourth year student at Western University battling Leukemia, who is need of a stem cell match. McGlynn is an aspiring medical student who is turning to her fellow students to take to one step closer to becoming cancer free. Western’s stem cell club helping with this mission by hosting a series of stem cell drives, which will start in the Health Science Building on January 30th.
Executive advisor for the stem cell club, Gabriele Jagelaviciute insists that awareness will help many struggling patients.
“They are very important because a lot of people don’t know about them. A lot of the people looking for stem cell matches are very under represented, because most of the registry is white, Caucasian women and so, ethnic minorities are very unrepresented on the database, which is why we run lots of drives to attract people and hopefully give those patients a fighting chance.”
Jagelaviciute says that the beginning process is fairly simple.
“On the day of the drive, it will be like any other drive. You will go through the informed consent, the questionnaire and then do the swabbing.”
Unlike blood drives, stem cell matches take a while for patients to review their donation.
“So if they are a match, there is a big process with one match. They contact you, see if you are still interested and explain the situation and then do some more testing to see how well of a match you really are.”
