May 22, 2009

When real life is the teacher,
the lessons can be the hardest

Students from the Class of 2012, who are helping a classmate find a matching bone marrow donor, meet a tremendous outpouring of support in the face of a frightening challenge.

Natasha Collins with her mother, Anne, at this year's white coat ceremony.

While this is the time of year when most first-year medical students are basking in the glow of successfully completing their initial year of medical school, Natasha Collins and members of her class are working to find her a bone marrow match.

Collins, who grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., deferred medical school for two years so she could be treated for acute myelogenous leukemia. She underwent a successful cord blood transplant in 2006, but in February the cancer returned. Collins sent out an e-mail to tell her classmates about her relapse, and since then, they’ve been committed to helping her.

“Unless she gets a bone marrow transplant, the cancer will keep coming back, and the time between each remission will get shorter and shorter,” said classmate Jocelyn Bosco.

Collins’ search for a match is complicated by the fact that her father is African-American and her mother is white -- 90 percent of patients match to their donor’s ethnic background. The composition of the National Marrow Donor Program registry underscores the problem. A total of 73 percent of registry donors are white, eight percent are African American, and only three percent are biracial. This lack of ethnic and racial diversity leaves up to 64 percent of patients unable to find a donor.

Collins with her father Ted at the white coat ceremony.

To improve those odds, Bosco and fellow classmates are casting a wide net. They have organized a publicity campaign, including an online donor drive. They’ve also organized on-site drives at four locations at Yale and at Yale-New Haven Hospital. As a result of these efforts, more than 5,000 potential donors have registered.

Students also have enlisted the help of national organizations. The Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association and the Student National Medical Association have both agreed to hold drives.

“It’s been a total class effort,” said Bosco. “Before we got started with the drive, we didn’t know where to put our energy, but we feel so much hope by the response we’ve gotten. If we can make people aware of this issue, maybe we can make a difference in Natasha’s life and the lives of others.”

After the recurrence of Collins’ cancer was discovered, she underwent aggressive immunotherapy, and the leukemia is again in remission. She is now undergoing regular rounds of chemotherapy to keep the cancer at bay, but to achieve a full recovery, she needs a bone marrow transplant.

If there’s any upside to Collins’ ordeal, she said, it’s that it will make her a better doctor. “I know I’ll be much better at interacting with patients,” she said. “I understand how it feels to be a patient.”

Collins hopes she’ll soon be going through the lengthy process of getting a bone marrow transplant, but in the meantime, she’s “seeing friends, going to the movies and just trying to enjoy each day.”

Looking toward the future, she doesn’t yet know what medical specialty she’ll pursue, but she’s leaning toward pediatrics or psychiatry. “One thing I do know,” she said, “I don’t want to do oncology.”

If you’d like to help Collins by registering to be a bone marrow donor, go to www.dkmsamericas.org. For more information about bone marrow donation, go to www.marrow.org.

—Jennifer Kaylin

Photos courtesy of Natasha Collins

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