ACTO OF COMPASSION: BONE MARROW GIFT COULD SAVE A LIFE

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Lyndea "Lindy" Dew is a busy Northwestern University senior who also works 25 hours a week as an international government relations intern at a downtown Chicago bank while combing the country for the job she wants when she graduates in June.

But today Dew is stopping to try to help save someone's life, someone she doesn't even know.

Dew, who graduated from Cape Central High School in 1989, is giving her bone marrow to a 36-year-old woman dying of leukemia.

The two were matched up through the National Marrow Donor Registry, a clearinghouse that lists the names of 700,000 possible donors.

At 8:15 this morning, doctors at Rush Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago begin extracting two quarts of bone marrow and developing blood cells from the back of Dew's pelvic bone in an operation that lasts about 1 hours. Dew will be under general anesthesia. She previously gave two pints of her own blood in case it's needed.

The marrow then will be placed in a cooler and taken by courier to the airport to be flown to an undisclosed destination on the East Coast.

The unidentified woman waiting there has spent the past 10 days undergoing chemo and radiation therapy that has destroyed all her bone marrow. Without an almost immediate transplant, she will die.

Dew has spent the past 10 days of her own life being "real careful, taking care of myself and driving safely."

The recipient's doctors say she has a 60-70 percent chance of being cured by the intravenous infusion of Dew's bone marrow better than normal odds because of the particular kind of leukemia she has.

But the odds of the woman and Lindy Dew being matched at all were much, much lower possibly as low as a one-in-a-million chance.

Their story began with a bone marrow blood drive at Northwestern in 1991. Dew, who has a near-phobic hatred of needles, gave blood anyway, hoping to help out a fraternity with a member who had been stricken with leukemia.

He died in August of that year from complications that set in after a bone marrow transplant.

Though she wasn't a match, Dew's name became part of the national registry. Unexpectedly, late last fall she received a letter notifying her that she'd been matched up with a leukemia patient.

A friend advised throwing it away, warning her that the procedure is dangerous and painful. But Dew said she felt no trepidation about answering the letter, even though the marrow recipient would not be someone she knew.

"I was so excited," she said. "It's the best feeling in the world to know you can help somebody else.

"...If my parents or sister and myself needed this I hope someone would do it for us," she said.

She describes herself as the perfect donor "a healthy 22-year-old college student."

The two women have the same rare O-negative blood type, and also share six other genetic factors also rare. It's a match made in medical heaven.

Dew's offer of her bone marrow to a stranger is all the more courageous in light of her extreme dislike for needles. Her father, Larry, the business manager for the Cape Girardeau Public Schools, remembers being summoned to her elementary school because his third-grader refused to budge from her desk to receive a measles shot.

She remembers it too. "My fear of needles was so great I clenched myself to my desk. Then they got a janitor to shake me."

They finally resorted to scooting her desk to the nurse's office.

That kind of determination characterized Dew's years at Cape Central, where she was a cheerleader, a member of the National Honor Society and ran track.

Dew said her parents have had many questions about the procedure but have supported her decision completely.

Her mother Judy teaches at L.J. Schultz School. Her sister Laura, 20, is studying in England. Laura doesn't know it, but her sister made her the beneficiary of a $250,000 life insurance policy just in case. She apologizes for the black humor.

Both parents are with their daughter in Chicago today. Before he left Cape Girardeau, Larry Dew laughingly attributed his daughter's altruism to her "good Presbyterian background."

She will not be allowed to contact the recipient for a year. "We don't want anybody getting too emotionally involved because a lot of things can happen," explained Eileen Bialas, bone marrow donor coordinator at Lifesource blood center in Skokie.

Bialas has walked Dew through the procedure, fully informing her of the possible dangers. They primarily are the same as for anyone under general anesthetic.

There also is a minuscule chance of infection or bone crumbling from the needle punctures, and also a slight possibility of human error in the handling of her blood.

Dew is allowed to send the recipient a letter along with the bone marrow, and will be kept informed of the patient's progress.

Once Dew herself has recovered from a week of soreness, she will begin a round of job interviews. In March, Merrill Lynch is flying the political science and Asian history major to New York City for an interview.

But before she leaves Northwestern, she plans to do some speaking on behalf of the National Marrow Donor Registry.

"All it is a numbers game," she said. "The more people get signed up the more people get transplants."

The number of the registry is (800) 654-1247.