David S. Spence/The Gazette Rockville resident Kathy Alsmeyer, a nurse at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, recently met the man to whom she donated her blood stem cells. Alsmeyer was instrumental in getting a blood registry drive held at the hospital, which paid the registration charges for some 200 people who added their names and blood types to the National Marrow Donor Program.

Some people express their generosity or compassion by volunteering their time. Other people write checks to charities. Kathy Alsmeyer of Rockville donated blood stem cells to a total stranger.

And thanks in part to her donation, a 44-year-old man named Joe, diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia, is alive today.

"Being a nurse, you have a tendency to lean on the side of wanting to help people," said Alsmeyer, a 46-year-old nurse at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville.

Alsmeyer registered with the National Marrow Donor Program in September 2001. The program matches possible donors with cancer or leukemia patients who need stem cells after their own are destroyed as a result of chemotherapy.

Without stem cells, patients' bodies can't prevent bleeding, carry oxygen or defend against infection, according to the National Marrow Donor Program Web site.

The program has recruited more than 5 million potential donors for its registry, and at any given time 3,000 patients are combing the registry for a possible match.

Alsmeyer's generosity was ignited when her son's friend was diagnosed with leukemia, and several blood drives were held to discover a match for the girl.

Alsmeyer picked up an information leaflet and showed it to Deborah A. Yancer, president of Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. Yancer agreed to hold a drive for Shady Grove employees and their families, with the hospital footing the bill for registration charges, which ranged from $80 to $100 per person, Alsmeyer said. Some 200 people turned out for the drive and added their names and blood types to the National Marrow Donor Program's registry that day.

There are two ways to donate stem cells. One is with bone marrow, where the donor will undergo an operation removing marrow from the back of the pelvic bone. The other way is with peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC), which naturally circulate in the blood.

The PBSC donor will receive several injections of Filgrastim, which increases the number of stem cells present in circulation around the body -- "like Pacman, going through the body and multiplying," Alsmeyer said. Then the donor will have an intravenous needle hooked up to each arm so that blood removed from one arm passes through a machine farming the stem cells and returns to the rest of the body through the other arm.

Alsmeyer was a PBSC donor, as Joe's doctor had recommended that process instead of a bone marrow transplant.

Alsmeyer received a phone call about donating in January 2002, just months after her registration.

She discovered that she was a potential match for someone who needed stem cells, and had some blood drawn to confirm it.

Two months later Alsmeyer was about to head to Mexico with her family when she received another phone call letting her know she was an even better match than they had thought.

When she returned from her vacation she was ready to donate her stem cells, but Joe's leukemia had fallen out of remission into "chronic blast," a worsened state, Alsmeyer said. She was required to wait to donate until Joe's symptoms went into remission again, which they did several weeks later.

The day she was told Joe was in remission again, Alsmeyer was at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda receiving injections of Filgrastim. After an injection a day for five days, Alsmeyer went in on the sixth day, received one final injection and got hooked up to donate her stem cells.

The process took five hours, the maximum amount of time allowable to donate stem cells. But since Alsmeyer's small veins required smaller needles, not enough blood had been processed in that time period, so she returned the next day and donated again. That time, the procedure took three hours.

The blood then was flown to Washington state, where Joe was ready for the transfusion.

After donating the stem cells, she was tired but excited, she said.

"If I could have gotten on an airplane and flown out to where [the PBSC donation] was going, I would have done it," she said.

Joe experienced only minor problems with accepting the blood stem cells, Alsmeyer said. He stayed in an outpatient clinic for a couple months to recuperate. But by Christmas, he was home in Philadelphia and doing very well, she said.

Alsmeyer herself recovered quickly from the donation procedure. Filgrastim injections typically produce bone and muscle aching, headaches or trouble sleeping, but Alsmeyer said she really only suffered from back and hip pain that went away as quickly as it came. Within two days, she was back at work.

U.S. law requires that stem cell donors and recipients remain anonymous to one another until one year after the transfusion. That way, if the recipient's state worsens or the donor chooses to pull out, they each have privacy.

After one year, the donor and recipient may choose to get in touch with one another. At that point, the two are free to finally meet, and Alsmeyer and Joe decided to do just that.

Alsmeyer was finally able to meet Joe at the end of June, when he and his family held a "birthday party" of sorts to celebrate his improving health after the donation.

It was a very emotional party, but it was "just wonderful," Alsmeyer said.

"I was a little nervous," she said, adding that Joe and his family were nervous, too. "You never know what you'll find when you get to the other end. But we got along really well."

With a bachelor of science degree in nursing and a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from Clemson University, along with 23 years of nursing under her belt, Alsmeyer had a different perspective on the whole donation experience than many other donors might have, she said.

"It really makes you more aware of all that's going on around you," she said of being a nurse.

One year and nearly three months after the donation, Alsmeyer herself feels great. When she's not working, she's busy as the co-chairman of Richard Montgomery High School's student directory, co-chair of planning for Richard Montgomery's Post Prom Party and a liaison between the Booster Club and the PTSA. With both son and daughter in high school, she enjoys getting involved with the school's activities, and she occasionally helps with her husband's appraisal business.

But she's still on the National Marrow Donor Program registry, and she's ready to donate again if needed.

"Mine was a very positive experience," she said. "I'd do it for [Joe] again, I'd do it for anyone else again."