Stem cell registry match helps Kansas woman save man’s life

FAIRWAY, Kan. – A simple act more than a decade ago led to a Kansas woman saving a man’s life.

“It was really surprising, and I felt a lot of different things in that moment.”

That’s how Melissa Kingston described the day she received a life-changing phone call in early 2024. To understand this moment though, you have to go back 14 years to the year 2010. At that time, Kingston was a junior at the University of Kansas and on a Birthright Trip to Israel with a student group called KU Hillel.

While there, she attended a session at a hotel ballroom put on by the Gift of Life, a nonprofit organization that matches stem cell donors with blood cancer patients.

“At the end they passed around kits and asked people, if they felt inspired, to swab their mouth with a cotton swab and be entered into the registry,” she said.

By that Kingston means into a stem cell and bone marrow database. Since cellular therapy is an exact science, donors and recipients must match at the DNA level.

It’s estimated that 70% of people don’t even have a fully matched donor in their own family. Having felt compelled by other people’s stories, she decided to add her information to the registry.

“They could be overseas; they could be in America. The donor registry connects people from all over the world,” Kingston said.

Fast forward to earlier this year; she got a voicemail from Gift of Life saying she matched with someone.

“I was stunned,” she said.

The nonprofit flew her and a companion out to their facility in Boca Raton to collect her stem cells. Before she left though, she had to complete a physical and blood tests to double check she was a true match.

Kingston also had to undergo five days of injections to help produce stem cells in her body so that when medical staff went to remove it from her blood in Florida it was something they could do at a low volume.

“Many cancer patients can’t take on high volumes of liquid,” she said.

Once in Florida, the process took about 4.5 hours, and it was over; she equated the experience to giving blood.

While the recipient is anonymous, Kingston learned she was helping a 63-year-old man diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia.

“They followed up with me a week later to let me know he received the transplant and that he was doing well. After a year they allow the opportunity for the donor and recipient, if both parties agree, to meet,” Kingston said.

That’s something she said she’s looking forward to doing.

To learn more about Gift of Life and becoming a donor, click here .

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