'You could save a life': Local Duquesne football player donating bone marrow to save a life
CLIFTON HEIGHTS, Pa. - This holiday season a 19-year-old Delaware County athlete is giving a piece of himself to save a complete stranger.
Ayden Garnes is known for getting takeaways on the field as a defensive back for Duquesne University. Garnes was an all-state athlete at Monsignor Bonner before heading to Duquesne. He was injured his freshman year, making this his first season playing.
At a team event, he signed up to be a donor for the Be the Match Registry. He says the team got about 500 people to participate.
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After six months, he found he had a match with a woman who has cancer and, although he never met her, he was ready to donate his bone marrow to help her.
"I had a grandmother who had cancer," Garnes said. "What if she needed something that this woman needs?"
As he was roaming the secondary, he started learning and executing the donor playbook.
"My first test was during the season on our bye week," said Garnes. "I had to take some blood to make sure I was able to do this. They knew the bone marrow was good but they had to make sure everything else was okay so I could move on with each process."
He hopes others see his story and choose to become donors, too.
"Even my friends, they were like, ‘I need to do the match thing to see if I can match with anybody,’" Garnes said. "Just trying to get more and more people to see what they have because you could be able to save a person’s life."
Mom and dad couldn’t be more proud of the decision he made.
"As a parent, to see him excel not only academically, but for him to be able to share his gifts of athleticism to the world through football is one thing," said Kevin Garnes. "To see him want to give the gift of life to someone he barely, that he doesn’t even know, as a parent, it’s indescribable for me."
He will have the surgery January 4th in Boston, with two incisions in his hips that will heal in time.
"I could be down for two weeks or so and she’s going to be alive," Garnes said. "That’s been in my head. I take hits and bruises all the time. I feel like it’s just another day."
Another day that he’s chosen to gift for a complete stranger.
Because that’s what #8 does.
Anyone interested in Be the Match can get information at the Be the Match website.