Sharon Stem Cell Donor to Meet Woman Whose Life He Helped Save

Six years ago, Sharon-native Scott Berenson, 37, was helping his wife Alison by volunteering for one of the many projects she took on in her role as the the young adult program director for Combined Jewish Philanthropies.

This time it was a registration drive at Harvard Hillel in Cambridge for the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation.

Berenson was there, so he figured he would take the 90 seconds it took for a clinician to swab the inside of his mouth and send it off for testing. He didn't really give it much thought after that.

“[Four] years probably went by and the only time I really consciously thought about the Gift of Life was when once a year I would get a call from a nice person on the other end who was just updating my personal information,” Berenson said. “I didn’t really think too much of it because I knew that the chances of being a match were pretty remote in the grand scheme of things. Then, in October of 2011, I got the call and they left a message and I knew immediately from the tone and the tenor of the call that this was a little bit different."

That call would change his life and the life of a 29-year-old mother from Connecticut who was dying from acute myeloid leukemia forever.

He called back and they told him there was a 92-percent chance he was a match for someone.

"The chances of being a match are pretty remote and for me to be able to help somebody in need I thought was pretty remarkable, so I didn’t have any doubt that it was something that I wanted to proceed with,” he said.

Berenson passed all the initial testing, including blood work and an extensive physical. On the day of the donation, he found himself at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“You get hooked up to a machine . . . it looks similar to a dialysis machine or something,” he said. “The way it works basically is there’s one needle in one arm and another needle in your other arm and the blood goes out one arm, it gets filtered, warmed, the stem cells are collected in a centrifuge type of thing and they go up into a collection bag. And then your blood gets warmed and then returned in a vein through your other arm. You sit there for about eight hours and it’s pretty uneventful as long as there are no complications."

For Berenson, there were no complications in the donation process, but there was one minor distraction. Former New England Patriot Joe Andruzzi, a cancer survivor himself, stopped by for a visit.

“It was an unexpected treat and I got to meet him and shake his hand and see his Super Bowl ring and everything, so that was great because it was about halfway through and I was getting a little edgy,” said Berenson.

After enough of his stem cells had been collected, they were put on ice in a cooler and immediately sent by courier to the recipient.

“From that point I didn’t really hear too much, other than the follow up from the nurse, the Gift of Life organization to make sure I was feeling okay,” he said.

As part of the way the Gift of Life program works, donors and recipients are largely unable to find out much about one another.

“The recipient and I were able to send anonymous letters to one another," Berenson said. “I didn’t know my recipient’s name or too many intimate details but I knew that she had a family. I knew that she had an almost one-year-old daughter at the time of the donation. So having a child that was slightly older, my son, having a spouse, it really hit home that I could have been in this person’s shoes that I was helping.”

From her letters, Berenson found out that her body accepted the stem cells and her condition was improving.

“It’s an emotional thing," he said. "But it definitely feels great to be able to help somebody in such a dire position as this person had found themselves in."

On Tuesday, May 21, Berenson will be honored at the annual Gift of Life gala in New York City. During the ceremony, he will be brought up on stage to meet the woman whose life he helped save for the first time.

“I’m extremely excited," he said. "Probably a little bit nervous to be honest because I think the gravity of the situation will hit me for the first time and it will probably be highly emotional. But I’m most definitely excited not only to meet her but to meet her family, siblings, extended family, and I’m sure there will be friends there so I think that will be great to put a human face, if you will, to the momentous event that transpired.

“It will be a wonderful thing to tell my personal story and if that can be a motivational factor in having attendees increase their support to the organization or get registered themselves if they aren’t currently on the registry, I think that would be wonderful,” he said, adding that he encourages anyone he can to get the 90-second cotton swab.

"Certainly where the recipient’s life is so similar to mine, spouse, young children, professional and has their whole life in front of them it really hits home,” he said. “This could have been me and the shoe could have been on the other foot so it’s just so humbling really.”