The St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis baseball writers have teamed up to sponsor Join for Joe, an annual bone marrow registry drive to honor the late Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It took place Monday at the Cardinals game.
Alexis Strauss, daughter of the late Joe Strauss, joined KMOX Monday to talk more about the drive, and her father's battle with leukemia. He was diagnosed with acute lymphocyctic leukemia in January of 2015, which is a type of leukemia most commonly found in children.
"The fact that he contract as an adult, we knew we had a little bit of an uphill battle, but remained optimistic throughout his whole diagnosis," Strauss said. "Unfortunately, he passed away December 27 of 2015. So he wasn't able to make it a full year. But we did everything we could."
She said her father had a bone marrow transplant, plus multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radation. After he passed, Alexis and her family got together with Be the Match, one of the largest bone marrow registries in the world.
"They have great volunteers, and they have great educational platforms to educate communities on what they can do to join the registry," she said. "Why there's a need for bone marrow donors everywhere. It's not commonly talked about, and the process itself is so easy and Be the Match has been a wonderful partner with us, as well as the B aseball Writers Association and the Cardinals."
Finding matches for bone marrow donations can be tough, which is why there's a need for lots of people to register to donate. Alexis said about 40,000 people go without a match every year.
The process to get on the registry is simple. Doctors swab the inside of a volunteer's cheek to see if they'll be a match, and then they get added to the registry.
To hear more about Join for Joe and the bone marrow donation registry, listen to Alexis Strauss' full interview on Total Information AM:
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