How a cheek swab years earlier saves life of Atlanta pilot

Miller would have almost certainly been near the end if it weren’t for a young pilot living hundreds of miles away.

Six years earlier, cadet Tristan Briggs had completed a simple cheek swab at a bone marrow registry event at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. Briggs, who was 19 years old at the time, didn’t give too much thought to joining the registry. He said he figured the odds of ever getting a call were remote. “Like winning the lottery,” he said.

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Briggs was stationed in Enid, Oklahoma, when he learned from his mom that an organization was trying to reach him. It turned out to be NMDP, formerly known as the National Bone Marrow Donor Program and Be The Match. Briggs was told he was identified as a potential match for an extremely sick person waiting for just-the-right match to save his life.

“I was like wow, this is actually a thing,” he said. “I’m actually going to be needed for someone here.”

AML is a rare, aggressive cancer that develops rapidly, causing abnormal white blood cells to grow in the bone marrow. Shortly after his diagnosis, Miller became critically ill. He battled pneumonia and sepsis, both common complications of this form of leukemia.

It was the early days of the pandemic in spring 2020 when the lottery-like match was made between Briggs and the now seriously ill Miller.

Finding a bone marrow match

Bone marrow transplants, also known as blood stem cell transplants, help save the lives of about 8,000 people a year in the United States with blood cancers — from children only a few months old to adults in their 70s, according to NMDP.

The organization estimates that 18,000 people in the U.S. each year are diagnosed with diseases that can be treated by a transplant, and 12,000 of those people will need stem cells from an unrelated donor.

Dr. Kent Holland, medical director of Northside Hospital’s Blood and Marrow Transplant Program, handled Miller’s bone marrow transplant. Holland also helped create the bone marrow registry back in the 1980s with the original goal of having 100,000 people on the registry, “to help the odds a little bit.” It now has close to 10 million in the U.S. alone, and another 20 million around the world.

For a bone marrow transplant to be successful, the donor and the recipient have to be well matched. Unlike matching blood types, matching bone marrow stem cells is a bit more complicated.

To see if donors are a potential bone marrow match, they are be tested to find out what type of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) they have. HLA is a protein found on most cells in the body — including those in the immune system. The closer the HLA match, the better chance that a bone marrow transplant will succeed.

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“Looking at our codes, there’s no way you and I would match statistically. But when you have 20 or 30 million people, it’s like a combination lock at Home Depot, you pick out of the box, it’s going to be different. Some of us have common codes. Some of us have rare codes. But with (Miller’s) case, we entered his code information into the database, and identified a 24-year-old (Briggs) who was a perfect match. He matched all 10 of the 10 genes we were interested in,” Holland said.

The bone marrow transplant between Briggs and Miller took place on May 26, 2020.

“There is no more direct impact than that — like without the marrow of my bones, somebody else would not be alive,” Briggs said. “It’s not like donating blood, which is a great, wonderful thing. But to know there is an individual — Jack Miller — that I got to serve in this way is very, very gratifying,” said Briggs.

‘We are family now’

After one year, both men agreed to exchange information to stay in touch with each other.

“There was a voicemail from Jack on my old flip phone I have saved forever because it was incredible to hear his voice reaching out to me and being way more gracious than he needs to be. Not only the odds of a being a match to that level to work out, but we are both aircraft pilots, both love aviation, both growing up always wanting to fly. But having that connection has been super fun,” said Briggs.

They’ve since met in person in Savannah and at the Millers’ home, both of which have been emotional encounters.

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Briggs is now stationed at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa. He is now 29, married and father to a 7-month-old.

Holland said Miller is “doing absolutely fabulous,” and hasn’t had any recurrence of cancer, which typically takes place within the first three years of a bone marrow transplant if it is going to happen.

And more recently this year, he was cleared to fly again, resuming being a pilot and a flight instructor.

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“I am going to treat him (Briggs) and his wife like our kids; his kids like my grandkids,” Miller said. “That’s how I see it now. We are family now.”

About being a donor, Holland says, “this is an amazing gift for people to give. It’s an inconvenience for the donor, it takes time away from their day-to-day routine but most of the time, people who donate will save someone’s life and the vast majority of people who go through unrelated donor transplants will survive, and not only survive but be cured.”

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HOW TO HELP

How to be a potential bone marrow donor:

Note: You must meet certain medical requirements, including age and general health restrictions to be a donor.

Source: National Marrow Donor Program and UCLA Health.