Donating life at Wolfpack Nation

Their hearts pump red in more ways than one, these youngsters from N.C. State University. And so much for all this talk about millennials being self-absorbed and without much concern for anything beyond the reach of their electronic devices.

As evidence to the contrary, consider the students at NCSU who participated in a 2015 bone-marrow registry organized by the university’s Park Scholars program and a nonprofit group, DKMS, which promotes bone-marrow drives among students. Five of the students who participated in the drive had samples that matched people in need and were able to later donate bone marrow or blood save the lives of five people around the world they don’t even know.

Bone-marrow donations are a treatment for people with blood cancers, and 170,000 Americans are diagnosed with such diseases each year. Matching a donor to a recipient is a 400 to 1 shot, but the N.C. State drive produced a remarkable five matches out of 403 registered donors.

Donating isn’t easy. It can take up to eight hours. But NCSU donor Jordan Cousins, a senior, was philosophical about the balance of what he gave: “A little bit of discomfort possibly to save a life, so it wasn’t much of a decision.”

Now there are people going about their daily work and activities and playing with their children and grandchildren who might otherwise have been lost. But now, as the song goes, they are found – thanks to the amazing grace of these N.C. State students.

This story was originally published August 23, 2016 at 6:54 PM with the headline "Donating life at Wolfpack Nation."