CEDARVILLE, Ohio (WDTN) — A dean at Cedarville University is giving a teen a chance to beat cancer and live a healthy life through a life-saving donation.
“What do you say when you’re the match that could potentially save somebody’s life?” smiled Jeff Haymond.
Jeff Haymond’s stem cells are a perfect match for an Australian teen battling non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Through an anonymous process he was matched with the 15-year-old who is undergoing chemotherapy. He will undergo a stem cell transfer to ultimately help save her life.
Jeff works as Dean of the School of Business Administration at Cedarville University now, but his life-saving efforts started in 2004 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
“A young lady in my squadron had been part of a program where she had been part of saving someone’s life through a bone barrow transplant,” recalled Jeff.
Jeff’s call to help came 12 years later.
“This summer I got a phone call and they said Mr. Haymond … Are you still willing to do it? You are the match.”
Thursday, he will fly to a hospital in Washington D.C. where the donation process will begin.
“It’s a series of five days of injections to make sure my blood can promote the kind of platelets that they need,” described Jeff. “Then on the fifth day, they will do a procedure where they will take some of my blood from one arm and filter it through a machine and it goes back in the other arm.”
Those blood cells will be sent to Australia to give the teen a better chance of survival.
“A lot of times in life we wonder, ‘should I do this? Should I not?’ Well there’s no doubt here. This is what we’d say is a no-brainer,” said Jeff.
After the procedure, Jeff will get updates on how the teen is responding to the operation. He’s hoping to one day be able to meet her.
