HUNTSVILLE Tomi Garrison had no idea what her future would hold when she agreed to have her mouth swabbed during a bone marrow donor drive in the spring of2010.

The Sam Houston State University softball player and psychology major was a sophomore when the Be The Match Registry did a presentation in her health class, calling on volunteers to start the process that would determine if they had compatible bone marrow to someone who desperately needed it.

My friend and I said yeah well do it, never thinking wed be called on, because statistically the chances of us being a match were so slim, said Garrison, now a senior at SHSU.

But the unlikely scenario became reality a year later when Garrison got an email that would soon change not only her life but also someone elses.

The email said I was a possible match and asked if I would do more testing. So I went in for testing at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, where they took a lot of blood and tested to see if the antigens matched up, she said. Even then the chances of being an accurate match werent good, but I was hoping I would be a match.

Garrisons hopes came true in October 2011, when she received word that she had compatible bone marrow to a 59-year-old woman who suffers frommultiple myeloma.

She quickly agreed to become a donor for a woman shed never met.

My mom cries about everything, said Garrison. So she started crying because she was just proud of me because this was solely my decision.

The tears continued when Garrison shared the news with SHSU health instructor Susie Stone and Roseanne Keathley, acting chair of the SHSU Department of Health and Kinesiology.

We just screamed and cried, Keathley said. We were so excited that one of our students here in the health department was a match and that she was willing to take the time away from school to do this.

Read more here:
SHSU senior donates bone marrow to cancer victim

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