They came by motorcycle, car and on foot. They brought their babies, children and grandparents and some even brought their dogs.
Thousands of people converged on the Farmingville Fire Department on Horseblock Rd. on Nov. 29 in the hopes of being a bone marrow donor match for Farmingville’s Julianna Buttner, 6, who is suffering from an aggressive form of leukemia.
Mike Buttner of Farmingville, father of Julianna, said that Julianna was three years old when she diagnosed with cancer in 2006. After two and a half years of chemotherapy she went into remission but in Sept., the leukemia returned.
“When cancer comes back the second time it puts you into a category of high risk,” says Buttner of the reason for a bone marrow transplant.
The drive was in coordination with DKMS, the world’s largest bone marrow donor center and many volunteers, including Cyndi Poeggel of Lindenhurst, founder of Pay it Forward with Jackie, a non profit that she started after her own daughter’s struggle with leukemia.
DKMS Americas is an accredited (By the Be The Match Registry) national bone marrow donor center.
DKMS works to expand bone marrow donor registries by recruiting bone marrow donors from every race and ethnicity, in order to provide leukemia and other blood cancer patients in need of a bone marrow transplant with the best available donor match.
Charles Turano, Chief of the Farmingville Fire Department (FFD), joined scores of volunteers from the department, helped keep the process moving along with most people waiting on line for more than an hour to have their cheek swabbed. Lenny Turano of the FFD said that people started showing up at 11:30 a.m., way before the 1: 00 pm start time.
Kathleen Black, owner of a local Cactus Mexican Grill donated gift certificates for raffle prizes.
“It restores your faith in humanity. This is a wonderful gift if you are a match,” says Black.
As Mike Buttner looked in awe at the huge line of people still waiting to be swabbed, I asked him if he knew many of the people who were there and he said, “It’s all the people around us in our community. Somebody knows somebody. It just took on a life of its own.”
It takes about four weeks to process all of the donor samples.
