Student organizes effort to benefit family friend
A few months ago, Hannah Tikson got a call from her dad — a friend of their family, Kim Roper, had learned she only had a few months to live.
Roper, of Columbus, Ohio, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2009, but this year, doctors found that the cancer was spreading.
Now, Roper and her supporters are hoping she’ll be able to undergo chemotherapy and receive a bone marrow transplant.
Patients usually get donations from siblings, but Roper doesn’t have any, so she’s one of about 10,000 patients looking for a match on the National Bone Marrow Registry.
So far, she hasn’t found one, and doctors think she has only about a month to live, Tikson said.
That’s why Tikson, a fourth-year international business and finance student, is hosting a registration drive today — to get as many people in the registry as she can.
From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. today, she and others will be on Greene Street registering people for the database. To join it, participants swab their cheeks to check what kind of tissue a potential donor has.
The drive isn’t the first one that’s been held for Roper. Pennsylvania State University, where Roper’s son plays lacrosse, Miami University and colleges and groups throughout Ohio have organized drives, and over 900 people have registered on their own online.
In all, the effort — documented on match4kim.com — had gotten more than 2,700 people registered to donate bone marrow between Oct. 15 and Tuesday, according to the website.
And it’s made a personal impact on Tikson, too.
“It’s made me realize that no matter how bad of a day you’re having, you know that someone out there is fighting for her life,” Tikson said. “It makes you appreciate how great of a life you actually are living. You don’t sweat the small stuff, because people are fighting something much bigger.”