LHS Teacher’s Valentine: A Life-Saving Donation

Valentine’s Day is often about cards, flowers and small gestures of romantic love.

But sometimes love looks like this.

When Lorain High School teacher Marissa Garcia signed up for the bone marrow donor registry in 2015 at a church event at Sacred Heart, she didn’t know if she’d ever be called. She only knew why she was saying yes.

According to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), patients are most likely to match with a donor who shares their ethnic background and Hispanic donors are underrepresented on the registry. So she signed up.

The program helps connect donors with patients who need life-saving transplants. For Marissa, the reason was personal.

Cancer had already touched Marissa’s family. She lost her grandfather to leukemia and her grandmother to pancreatic cancer. The possibility of helping someone else fight for more time with their loved ones mattered to her.

“I have always donated in ways that I can,” she said. “I have donated my hair several times to make wigs for children who have lost their hair due to illness. In college, I organized and ran a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.”

Just after New Year’s, Marissa got the call. She was a match for a patient with leukemia living in Italy.

What followed was a demanding medical process that included multiple rounds of testing, detailed medical screenings, and a timeline that gave her less than five weeks to prepare.

The patient’s medical team needed the transplant as soon as possible. After further testing confirmed she was the best available match, a donation date was set for Feb. 9 in Rye, New York.

In the five days leading up to the donation, Marissa received daily injections of a medication that forced her body to produce stem cells rapidly. There were side effects. Bone pain, fatigue and migraine headaches, but she pushed through.

On donation day, she spent six hours connected to two IVs as her blood was processed through a machine that collected the stem cells needed for the transplant before returning the rest to her body. Exhausted, she slept through much of the procedure.

Now, she waits.

Because donor and recipient identities remain private, Marissa may never meet the person whose life she helped save. She’ll receive updates on how the transplant went, but for now she’s focused on recovery—and hope.

“It sounds like a bad experience, but when you think about what another person who has cancer has to deal with and how much they are depending on you as their match, it gives a new perspective, and it is something I would not hesitate to do again,” Marissa said. 

For her, the choice was simple.

“If I were in that situation with someone I loved,” Marissa said, “I would hope someone would be selfless enough to help them.” 

This Valentine’s Day, we’re reminded that love sometimes looks like a teacher saying yes to save a life.