DKMS is Driving for Donors with Pat

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

As you know DKMS is Driving for Donors with Pat. Well , this past Friday I got my first taste of what that really means.

"It is a very cool story how we ended up at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) today to do our marrow drive! A couple of months ago we got an email from a lady named Chris Reilly who is the mother of a little girl who is being treated at CHOP for Leukemia. Chris wanted to do something in honor of another patient from the hospital who had passed away without finding a matching marrow donor so she searched the internet and found Pat! She emailed us wanting to set up a drive and we were excited to plan one with her! CHOP is known as one of the best hospitals in the country to treat kids with a number of diseases but what interested us is how successful they are with kids with Leukemia who need transplants. We had been trying to find someone at CHOP to do a drive with us since last year with no luck! It is really hard to get to the right person at a hospital or business in order to plan a drive and we really count on "insiders" to help us!" From the Driving for Donors Blog written by Claudine Andrews

While Claudine and I had spoken previously on the phone and I met her once in person , this drive was a much different experience all together.

To start it off , I met Pat’s grandparents Gordon and Sharon, quite possibly the cutest grandma and grandpa ever, and so dedicated to the cause. Sharon just retired a few weeks ago and is already on the RV recruiting marrow donors in Pat’s honor. And Gordon’s "hats off’ gesture will have a smile on your face all day. And their dog is the sweetest thing and practically begs you to rub her tummy. Gordon and Sharon are the swift kick in the butt that gets people motivated to register. And they make sure the RV is well stocked with both regular and Diet Coke!

Claudine came next. Most moms would have just shrugged off their child’s idea to drive cross country and register people as marrow donors while living in an RV. Not Claudine. She drove up to CHOP in the middle of a huge rainstorm with her youngest son Tucker in tow, disregarded her soaking wet jeans and the fact she hadn’t had a real meal all day and jumped right into registering people. And Tucker, well he played with his cars and Claudine’s laptop, you barely heard a peep from him all day.

What about Pat? Well I didn’t get to meet him that day but he will be in NYC on Wednesday when he is registering donors at Medgar Evers College with the rest of the Driving for Donors gang/family.