In early December 2015, Ms. Sara Flink of Williston’s Technology Department flew with her husband to Washington, D.C. They weren’t going to visit one of the city’s renowned museums, or even to escape the cold of midwinter in New England. Instead, Ms. Flink spent five days undergoing a procedure so that she could anonymously donate bone marrow to a patient with leukemia.

When she was twenty years old and living in California, Ms. Flink joined the registry for Department of Defense Bone Marrow Program, which, as Ms. Flink says, works “specifically with members of the military or their immediate family.” At the time, her husband was in the Marine Corps and a young Marine on the base was battling leukemia. Although she wanted to help and was tested, Ms. Flink was not a match so she says she “immediately agreed” to instead be added to a national registry to “potentially help someone else in need.”

When the Bone Marrow Program contacted her in early December telling her she was a match for a 58-year-old leukemia patient, Ms. Flink knew right away that she still wanted to help because, as she comments, “The odds of finding a match can be difficult. I would hope that if a member of my family or myself ever needed help, that someone would do the same for us.”

After initial testing in mid-December at the Georgetown University Hospital to make sure she was healthy enough to be a donor, Ms. Flink was flown down to D.C. a second time for the actual procedure. She says, “The Bone Marrow Donor Program pays for everything and treats their donors incredibly well. The donor pays no money out of pocket for travel, medical expenses, food, hotel stay, etc. There is no cost incurred and the risks are extremely low.”

The type of donation Ms. Flink made is called a Peripheral Blood stem cell donation, or a PBSC. For five days, she was given daily injections of a drug to cause her body to hyper-produce the cells that form healthy bone marrow. Then, she says, “On the fifth day, I received the injections and spent 4 hours hooked to a machine that took blood from one arm, removed the PBSCs and then put the remaining blood back in to my other arm.”

While Ms. Flink was in the process of donating, she says the patient was “receiving treatments to essentially kill off all of these cells in their body so that they can then receive the healthy cells from me, which will then form all new, healthy bone marrow.”

Describing the procedure, Ms. Flink says, “The injections stung a little, but over all felt similar to a flu vaccine. The first two days were easy and I felt little discomfort or change. However by the third day, my bones began to ache, due to the cells migrating out of my bones. I also dealt with severe headaches, nausea and found it difficult to find any comfortable positions when trying to rest.”

However, she notes that “Overall the pain was minimal in comparison to what the recipient was going through” and that she had recovered fully after a week.

Ms. Flink comments that she is “thankful for having been given this opportunity to help someone in need. Life is short enough, so that fact that I potentially gave someone more time is an incredible feeling.”

Ms. Flink also says that, after this experience, she would encourage others to donate. She says, “I highly recommend that anyone, when they turn 18 considers joining the registry. If more people join the list, the odds of those in need finding a match would increase, and more lives could be saved. The discomfort was short term and minimal, but the rewarding feeling of knowing you helped someone, possibly saved a life was so incredible that it is 100% worth it, and if I am ever given the opportunity again I would say yes in a heartbeat.”

To join the Department of Defense Bone Marrow registry or to learn more, go to www.BeTheMatch.org.

A version of this article appears in the March 2015 print edition.