Hero Among Heroes

Photo By Senior Airman Daniel Crosier | Staff Sergeants Andrew Tymczyszyn and Kevin DeGuzman hard at work after Staff Sgt. Tymczyszyn recently donated bone marrow.  

PORT HUENEME, CA, UNITED STATES

08.06.2017

Story by Senior Airman Daniel Crosier 

146 Airlift Wing, California Air National Guard

Back in 2012, while donating blood, Staff Sgt. Tymczyszyn was asked if he wanted to participate in a simple cheek swap test for the bone marrow registry with BeTheMatch.org. Not thinking too much of it, he said yes. Four simple cheek swabs later, and he was done. Or so he thought.
One in 30 people will get the call and learn that they might be a potential match for someone in need of bone marrow, and only one in 300 will be deemed a positive match. After you are selected as a potential match, they draw about 10 vials of blood, to check everything from blood type to any infectious diseases. Staff Sgt. Tymczyszyn got the call about being a potential match three times, and on the third time is when he was told he was a positive match.
Only one in 430 people actually donate their bone marrow, and Staff Sgt. Tymczyszyn didn’t even hesitate to be among them. He went down to Scripps Green Hospital in San Diego at the end of July in 2017, and started his regimen of two shots of Neupogen for five days. Neupogen is a drug that normally is used to increase white blood cells. Doctors have also discovered that this drug, when taken in excess, causes the body to create more bone marrow which leaks into the blood stream. After the fifth day, he was hooked up to a machine, kind of a combination of a dialysis machine and platelet extraction machine, and the excess bone marrow was removed from his blood stream. This bone marrow harvesting method is still painful, although much less painful than the earlier method of drilling directly into the bone.
Because of the side effects, he was told no physical exercise for two weeks and no lifting over 25 pounds. He also developed an enlarged spleen, which is also a common side effect, making things more painful and uncomfortable. When all is said and done, he endured about three to four weeks of pain from the whole ordeal. But when asked about it, Staff Sgt. Tymczyszyn said, “What’s a month of pain for saving someone’s life?”
Tymczyszyn was most surprised he said, by the reception from his 146th Airlift Wing family. Arriving for his monthly unit training assembly at the beginning of August, just a few weeks after his procedure, the familial level of care and concern didn’t stop. Friends and fellow service members at the wing all expressed that they were extremely proud of what he did, some jokingly asking him if he donated because he needed the money. (And no, he did not receive any financial compensation for this.) Thanks to the Bill Young DoD Marrow Donor Program, through BeTheMatch.org, he was supplied with a letter to his commander explaining his physical restrictions.
Staff Sgt. Andrew Tymczyszyn’s sacrifice for not only his country, but for his fellow citizens at the expense of his own health, shows us that even though he might be a hero for putting on the uniform, he is definitely a hero among heroes.

• Date Taken: 08.06.2017
• Date Posted: 08.06.2017 16:18
• Story ID: 243951
• Location: PORT HUENEME, CA, US
• Hometown: MOORPARK, CA, US