Danny Kim, M.D., a 57-year-old Cook Children’s pediatrician, has been diagnosed with advanced leukemia. He has devoted his life to serving our community, and as he undergoes treatment for cancer, he is in urgent need of a blood stem cell transplant. Dr. Kim has given so much support to our patients and families. Now it’s time for us to support him.

Dr. Kim is a Houston native and a Texan to his core. He has been a beloved board-certified pediatrician in the Dallas area for 26 years. Dr. Kim has served as the Pediatric Department Chairman at both Presbyterian Hospital of Plano and Baylor Carrollton. He is a Fellow of The American Academy of Pediatrics and a Diplomate of The American Board of Pediatrics. Dr. Kim currently lives in Plano with the love of his life and wife of 29 years, Jennifer. 

We are looking for healthy people to undergo oral swab testing—a quick, painless and FREE process that will determine if your blood stem cells are a match for Dr. Kim or another patient in need.

For life-threatening blood disorders like leukemia, a blood stem cell transplant from a matching donor can save a patient’s life.  To find out if you are a match for Dr. Kim or another patient in need, all you need to do is a simple cheek swab. If you are confirmed a match, you will be asked to undergo more detailed testing, at which point you may accept or decline to be a donor.

Grow the Registry with Cook Children's

Cook Children’s is partnered with Be The Match to connect patients like Dr. Kim to a matching blood stem cell donor. We are hosting two donor drive events at our medical centers next week. Drop in to undergo oral swab testing and to join the donor registry. 

Cook Children's Medical Center – Fort Worth 
Wednesday, Nov. 15 from noon to 2 p.m.
908 Southland Ave., Fort Worth, TX, 76104
Across the street from Kids Place
**UPDATED November 13, 2023**

Cook Children's Medical Center – Prosper
Thursday, Nov. 16 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
4100 W. University Drive, Prosper, TX, 75078
Classrooms 1621 and 1622

How to Become a Donor

If you cannot make it to either event, you can still become a donor. To join the Be The Match donor registry, complete the digital form here or text Swab4Kim to 61474. Then, order your swab kit for free online or give samples at any donor registration drive. 

Join the donor registry if you are:

• 18-40 years old
• In good health
• Willing to donate to any patient in need

Ways to Donate 

Peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donation is the most commonly used method of collecting blood-forming cells. 90% of donors undergo this method, which involves collecting blood stem cells from circulating blood.

• Similar to donating plasma or platelets 
• Non-surgical outpatient process
• Takes 1-2 days to resume a regular routine
• Requires 5 days of shots leading up to donation

Marrow donation is less common and is completed while under general anesthesia. Only 10% of donors undergo this method, during which doctors use a needle to withdraw liquid marrow (where the body’s blood-forming cells are made) from the pelvic bone.

• No pain during donation
• Outpatient procedure
• Takes 2-7 days to resume a normal routine

After your stem cells are collected, they will be infused into the patient in need by IV. Your cells will then help their body create new bone marrow, giving them a crucial chance to beat their disease.

If you have any questions, contact Dr. Kim’s Be The Match representative, Gaytri Kapoor:

• Email: gkapoor2@nmdp.org 
• Phone: 281-780-1379

“This is a great community event for us and for Fort Worth to support our patients and for our patients to feel empowered,” said Pamela J. Sherman, M.D., Orthopedist at Cook Children's. “A lot of these patients have started with us as babies. Rock climbing really is a way for them to feel empowered and for them to see that it's different but it still works.”

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“Everybody had to have a tan in those days,” Pit, now 95, recalls. “We had been swimming, and I went out on a rooftop. I laid there for two hours and didn’t even burn.”

After hours in the sun, Pit developed a terrible headache. She remembers returning to her home, a two-story estate in the grand Ryan Place neighborhood, and telling her mother about the pain.

“The polio headache is one of the worst headaches. You can’t talk. It’s like a hammer,” she explained in a recent interview. “My mother called the doctor and said ‘something’s wrong, Pit’s very ill.’”

At that time, Fort Worth was in the middle of a polio outbreak, though Pit does not remember people being afraid or even aware of what was going on. Her doctor, however, knew about the growing number of local cases and insisted she be taken to the hospital.

She was admitted to Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital (formerly Harris Hospital) in downtown Fort Worth. A spinal tap confirmed her diagnosis and she was placed in an isolated area of the hospital reserved for children with polio.

“It was a great, big room with about 35 beds. There were old-fashioned washing machines everywhere,” she said. “The nurses put the pads in the machines in hot, hot water and rang them out. That’s how they got the hot pads to put on our bodies to stop the spasms. My father donated about 100 of these machines to the hospital.”

Much like COVID-19 today, polio was somewhat of a mystery to medical professionals. There was no medicine to treat its symptoms, nor a vaccine to prevent its spread. The only thing doctors and nurses knew to do was to apply heat.

“It was a lot like today, nobody knew a thing about it,” she said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), polio disabled more than 35,000 people a year in the 1940s. It mostly affected infants and children, and many who caught polio had no symptoms at all. But for those who did, muscle pain and paralysis were common. Some children needed help breathing from an “iron lung,” a negative pressure ventilator.

Pit remembers being the oldest patient in the polio wing and says she became somewhat of a mother figure to the younger children. After many weeks, Pit’s parents decided to bring her home to receive round-the-clock care. One of her caretakers was her great aunt, a nurse who had traveled to Boston to train to take care of children with polio.

Thankfully, Pit recovered from the virus and had no long-term effects. She says the COVID-19 pandemic reminds her of that period in many ways, but stresses that people back then were unified in fighting the disease.

“When the vaccine came out in 1955, people were excited, overjoyed,” she explained. “We could go swimming again. We could have parties again. We didn’t have to be isolated anymore.”

She worries that today’s media environment has played a role in our current division. In the early 1940’s, there was no television, much less internet, and social media. Newspapers and radio were the only way people received their news. Pit thinks that helped her generation trust doctors and science.

“Medical science today, thank goodness, is 10 times better than what we had,” she said, noting that she also had scarlet fever and diphtheria as a child. “People have got to realize that our doctors and nurses are trying.”

Thanks to the polio vaccine, zero cases have originated in the U.S. since 1979. Pit hopes the COVID-19 vaccine will do the same for the current pandemic.

“In life, there are phases, and I believe this is just a phase we are going through,” said Pit. “If you’re able to get the vaccine, you should. I’m 95 years of age, but I can’t wait to have it.”

She credits her excitement for the vaccine to her experience of living for nearly a century.

“Sometimes younger people don’t realize what people my age have lived through. We had wars and illnesses. This is just one more thing we have to work together to get through. And remember, we’re all in this together.”

This is the daunting statistic looming over the heads of the team at the National Marrow Donor Program at Cook Children’s. Each day, this dedicated group of six sets out to see how many people they can enroll in the National Marrow Donor Program, also known as the Be the Match registry. Equally as important, they’re also tasked with contacting, scheduling and counseling donors who have been identified as a likely match.

“We have the potential to save anyone’s life,” said Jamie Kayser, the program’s director. “It’s not just blood cancers, the donors we identify also save the lives of patients with diseases like sickle cell anemia. We find donors for both adults and children.”

For Kayser, her work is more than a job. She’s one of the millions of people who have been deeply affected by cancer.

“When I was 27 years old, my first husband died of leukemia,” she explained. “He underwent two bone marrow transplants over the course of his treatment. I was not a nurse at the time, but going through it with him, I realized how important nursing was and I decided I was going to become a nurse.”

At the time, Kayser vowed to never work in oncology or in a bone marrow transplant unit. She ended up doing both. Her first role was as an oncology bone marrow transplant nurse at Cook Children’s, which she accepted in 1994. Seven years later she took over her current position as the director of the National Marrow Donor Program at the hospital.

“I say I’m doing the other side of transplant,” Kayser said. “There’s the side where the patients receive the bone marrow transplant and then there’s this side where we register donors, find matches for patients and get them ready to give.”

The National Marrow Donor Program is a nationwide registry. For those enrolled, the chance of being identified as the best possible donor for a patient is one in 300.

“There are two ways to donate depending on what the patient’s doctor requests,” explained Kayser. “The most common way is very similar to giving blood.”

Seventy-five percent of donors are asked to provide blood stem cells through a peripheral blood stem cell donation (PBSC) donation. This was the case for 21-year-old Andrew Kozman of North Richland Hills, Texas. He knew the chances of being identified as a match were rare when he signed up for the donor registry in late 2018. During his PBSC donation, he said he was shocked to receive a call just three months after he submitted his cheek swab in the mail.

“You always hear about the people who have been on the list for years and have never received a call,” said Kozman. “I was fortunate to get a call just months later. Everything has moved pretty quickly since then.”

To prepare for his donation, a nurse visited Kozman’s home for five days ahead of the appointment and injected him with a drug called filgrastim. The medication increases the number of blood-forming stem cells in the bloodstream. On the fifth day, blood is drawn and circulated through a machine that filters out the stem cells. The remaining blood is returned to the donor.

“It was just like getting a normal flu shot. I felt a little sore afterwards, but that’s it,” said Kozman. “I never really gave it a second thought. I signed up and found out that someone needed my help. I thought ‘I could sit in a chair for a few hours if it’s going to save someone’s life.’”

The second way to give is through a surgical procedure called a marrow donation or harvest. Only 25% of donors are asked to provide blood stem cells in this manner. This procedure is done at a hospital while donors are under anesthesia.

“Unfortunately, there is a lot of misconception about bone marrow harvests,” said Gretchen Eames, M.D., medical director of Hematology/Oncology and Stem Cell Transplant Program at Cook Children’s. “It is considered a minor surgery. There is no incision; no stitches or sutures are needed.”

During a marrow donation, blood stem cells are withdrawn through two small punctures in the back of the donor’s pelvic bone. Discomfort during recovery varies from person to person, but Dr. Eames says donors are usually able to manage any pain with Tylenol or hydrocodone. Most people will make a full recovery within a week.

Rebecca Proctor joined the National Marrow Donor Program registry in 2014 when she was a college student. Now a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit nurse at a Fort Worth hospital, she was also surprised to receive a call informing her that she was a match for a patient in need of a bone marrow transplant.

“I was definitely a little nervous when I first got the call,” said Proctor. “After agreeing to a marrow donation, I would have days here and there where I would panic. But I knew if this was going to save someone’s life then I could do it.”

Dr. Eames performed the procedure on Proctor at Cook Children’s, which is one of two bone marrow collection centers in Texas and the second busiest center in the U.S.

“We do approximately four to six bone marrow harvests a month,” said Dr. Eames. “Our donors come from all over the place. Many of them live here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, but we have people who travel here from California, the east coast and the Midwest because they do not have a national marrow donor collection center where they live.”

For Proctor, the process was much easier than she anticipated.

“Besides a minimal amount of soreness, this really hasn’t been a bad recovery,” she said two days after her donation. “There’s some hoarseness in my throat from the breathing tube, but honestly, this is nothing compared to what my recipient has been going through.”

While donors don’t know who they are giving to, they are likely of the same ethnic background since donors and patients need to be a close genetic match. Given the current makeup of the National Marrow Donor Program registry, the likelihood of finding a match for a white patient is 77%. African American or black patients only have a 23% chance of finding a match.

To improve these odds, ethnic diversity among people on the registry needs to increase. To put it simply, more people are needed to join the registry.

“Everyone, when they turn 18 years old, should sign up for the National Marrow Donor Program registry,” urged Kayser. “We believe every patient should have an equal opportunity to find a match, regardless of their ethnicity.”

To increase those odds, Kayser’s team hosts booths at live events in North Texas as well as West Texas to enroll potential donors. They answer questions, collect information and cheek swabs.

Proctor, like most donors, encourages others to join the registry. Having gone through the process herself, she says she is glad she was able to help someone in need.

“This is something I am so proud to say I have done. Looking back, I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

By Daron Aldridge

For Heather Giattini, RN, Cook Children’s holds a special place in her heart. Less than two years ago her two-and-a-half year son, Brooks, had his first open-heart surgery to address his aortic stenosis (a narrowing of the heart’s aortic valve). It was then that she witnessed firsthand the power of the love and caring Cook Children’s staff and physicians give to their patients and families.

Even though she was a nurse in the adult hospital world at the time, she no more got home from discharge, looked at her husband Matt and said, “I HAVE to work there!” The opportunity finally presented itself and Heather joined Cook Children’s as a cardiovascular surgery nurse earlier this year.

Her desire to work here is simple. She explains, “I wanted to be a part of making people feel the way they made me feel. From our doctors – Dr. (Vincent) Tam and Dr. (Lisa) Roten – to the entire staff that took care of us, it was all amazing. This is where I knew I belonged.”

It wasn’t just Heather who belonged here. As fate would have it, following a recent routine checkup with Dr. Roten, his parents were faced with the reality that a now 4-year-old Brooks would need another surgery. Even though they had hoped it would be years before he would need another surgery, Heather and Matt found solace in the fact that they knew Cook Children’s was the place Brooks belonged also.

But this time, the surgery would be a little different. Thanks to organ and tissue donations and the hand-in-hand work of Cook Children’s and CryoLife, Brooks would be getting a new valve in his heart that will hopefully mean this is the last surgery this young boy will need for decades.

The tissues, like the ones that are helping save Brooks’ life, are donated by families, who have lost loved ones and want to bring joy and hope out of their loss. Through CyroLife, these donations are cryopreserved for 10 years. This means they are able to positively influence and possibly change the lives of children, who aren’t even born yet. When these families make such a decision to be organ and tissue donors, they truly do “Donate Life.” Please visit donatelife.net to learn more about the life-saving importance of the selfless act of organ and tissue donation.

To celebrate the monumental impact such donations can have on patients, Brooks is the first proud recipient of the Donate Life: Recipient pin from CryoLife. The pin, along with similar pins that surgeons and nurses wear, are a quick way to show the world that organ and tissue donations can save lives.

As Brooks’ dad Matt said, “Most people think about the large organs when they think about donation but tissue donations may be small in size but can have a huge impact on lives.”