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Evansville family gives back by hosting donor drive

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Photo by Dan Lassiter

Ron and Pat Carlsen of Evansville are putting on a bone marrow registry drive.

EVANSVILLE — Ron Carlsen's life has gone full circle.

In the 1980s, he signed up for the national registry to donate bone marrow when a little girl he knew got leukemia and needed a transplant.

"I said I wanted to help," the 46-year-old Evansville resident said.

He never was called to donate, but decades later Carlsen is urging others to sign up for the registry after a donor from the list provided stem cells to save his life.

"Now, here I am a recipient," he said. "I have come full circle. I can't begin to say how beautiful it really is."

Carlsen and his wife, Pat, are hosting a marrow donor drive to sign people up for the national registry Monday, March 9, at the Masonic Lodge in Evansville. The date of the event marks the second anniversary of Carlsen's transplant.

He was diagnosed in July 2004 with a disease known as myelodysplastic syndromes, a blood cancer, and was given 12 to 20 years to live. The only hope for a cure is a bone marrow or stem cell transplant, he said.

He went through a series of treatments including chemotherapy before doctors told him in October 2006 that he needed a transplant.

None of his four siblings were a match, but by January 2007 they had found a few possible matches in the national registry. An unidentified female about his age became the donor, providing him with life-saving stem cells transplanted March 9, 2007, at University Hospital in Madison.

Since then, he's been hospitalized three times, and he has chronic graft-versus-host disease, a common complication of the transplant. Otherwise, Carlsen said he feels pretty good, and he's proud to say he's a survivor of myelodysplastic syndromes.

"It was a long haul," his wife said. "We're just trying to stay as positive (as we can), and I think that's what got us through."

About 80 percent of patients needing a donation from the registry never find a match, Carlsen said.

"There's just not enough knowledge out there," Pat said. "People think at these drives, you have to come and give blood. You don't."

"Us hosting this drive is not only a way of trying to pay it forward and save lives, but at the same time trying to heighten awareness a little bit to these diseases and the cure that's available for them," Carlsen said. "And make it a little easier for people to get involved and help out."

The Carlsens and their two daughters also are raising money for the Restoring Hope Transplant House in Middleton, where families stay while loved ones receive transplants in Madison.

Carlsen lost a good state job working in power plants because of medical separation, and now he's thinking about going back to school to start his second chance at life.

Actually, it's his third. Carlsen beat bladder cancer after a diagnosis in 1990.

"My wife and I are just so beside ourselves with gratefulness," he said.