Saving a stranger’s life

At only 20 years old, Roddy Roche can say he has saved a life. His bone marrow helped a complete stranger battling cancer, and a recent email stated that her prognosis is good.

Roche, a 2013 graduate of Wantagh High School, is a sophomore at Fordham University, where he plays football. Last April, he and his teammates each gave a swab of saliva for the Be the Match Foundation, operated by the National Marrow Donor Program, which helps cure people with blood cancers.

There was a 1-in-9 million chance that Roche’s bone marrow would be a match, but in August, he got a call. He went for more testing, at which point there was still just a 1-in-10 chance he would be a perfect match. A month later, it was confirmed, and he was asked to donate his marrow to a 62-year-old woman with leukemia whom he had never met.

He was initially supposed to donate in October, but the woman had to undergo more chemotherapy, and Roche finally made his donation on Dec. 3 at the New York Blood Center in Manhattan. In the four days prior, nurses visited his dorm room to give him shots that pulled his marrow into his blood stream.

The procedure took about six hours, and Roche had to stay still in a reclining chair. As soon as it was done, a courier was there with a cooler to take the marrow to JFK airport, and all its donor was told was that it was going somewhere in the U.S.

He cannot find out the woman’s name, or where she lives, he said, until a year after the donation.

It took him about a week, Roche said, to regain his full strength, as he had headaches and aching bones in the days after. He missed some classes, and couldn’t practice with the football team for two weeks. “Everyone was supportive,” he said. “Everyone understood if I had to miss some stuff. It was for a good cause.”

Recently, the Be the Match Foundation emailed Roche to let him know that the woman is recovering and doing well. “It feels awesome to help someone, knowing that someone’s alive because of me,” he said. “It definitely would be nice to meet her.”

Roche plays safety and cornerback for the Fordham Rams, which finished this past season with a 10-2 record. He previously played fullback and quarterback for the Wantagh Warriors, and got his start when he was 8 with the Wantagh Football Club. In high school he was a member of the national and business honor societies, and also played basketball.

At Fordham, he is studying economics with a minor in finance, and is hoping for a business internship this summer. His older brother, Tom, attends Penn State University, and a younger brother, Brian, is at Hofstra. His sister, Julia, is an eighth-grader at Wantagh Middle School.

Roche’s father, Gerard, who has a childhood friend who benefitted from a bone marrow transplant in 2002, said he has always tried to instill the giving spirit in his children. “I’m so proud that he did it,” he said of his son’s donation. “It shows that he is doing the right thing in life, helping out a fellow human being that you don’t even know.”

To prepare the woman for the transplant, doctors had to weaken her immune system to so that it would accept Roche’s marrow. She and Roche will now share genetics, and she will have the same allergies that he does.

Roche said that after donating that swab of saliva a year ago, he never thought twice about it until he got that phone call, and was the only person on his team found to be a match for someone. His decision to donate was easy.

“I knew I was definitely doing it,” he said, adding that he would encourage others to do the same. “I have no regrets.”

It was also a learning experience for Roche. “Someone’s life is on the line, it was definitely worth it,” he said. “It just makes you realize how fragile life is.”