Schaumburg donor drive seeks match for oncology nurse
The family of a longtime oncology nurse battling leukemia is holding a stem cell donor drive in Schaumburg Sunday hoping to help her find a cure.
The “Be The Match Registry” drive in honor of Gail Gardner will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday at Elegant Event, 630 Morse Ave. in Schaumburg. The event is being organized by Gardner's daughters, Robin Walsh and Tracy Gardner.
Gail Gardner, an Elgin resident, has been an oncology nurse with a specialty in bone marrow transplant since 1991. Diagnosed with leukemia in May 2012, she went into remission after five months of chemotherapy.
The leukemia returned in October 2013, and Gardner is being kept in remission with low doses of chemo every eight weeks. But she needs a marrow or stem cell transplant to be cured.
The process of registering to be a donor is easy and takes only a few minutes. A potential donor merely has to fill out a form and provide a cheek swab.
And while the search is on for a compatible donor, it could turn out that a person who registers Sunday matches someone in need somewhere far from home.
Such was the case for Sabrina Chahir, an 11-year-old leukemia survivor from Mount Prospect, whose stem cell match was 30-year-old Maximilian Eule of Austria.
Eule, who traveled to the United States earlier this month to meet Sabrina, had registered as a potential donor for someone in his former hometown in Germany a year and a half before he was identified as the only known match in the world for the little girl from Mount Prospect.
To learn more about the current effort to find a match for Gardner, visit the Gail Gardner Save a Life Registry at http://www.bethematchfoundation.org/site/TR/TeamBeTheMatch-Ne/Foundation? pg+team&fr_id=1960&team_id=42796.