Gina Cousineau doesn’t seem to weigh the 100 pounds required to donate blood. But after speaking with her about the death of her nine-year-old son, I learned about the immense and unseen pain that weighs down her skinny frame.

I met Cousineau at the blood drive in Argyros last week. After two finger pricks, I didn’t have enough iron in my bloodstream to donate and instead wandered to Cousineau’s table. She told me about her organization, “Be A Hero, Become a Donor Foundation,” formed in honor of the beaming child on the brochures and posters.

“He was my son,” she said.

Evan Cousineau was diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy, a metabolic genetic disease, in May of 2007. Gina was told it would take her son’s life in six to 12 months.

Evan was transferred from Children’s Hospital of Orange County to the University of Minnesota for five months. Since none of his three siblings were a match for a bone marrow transplant, Evan had to rely on strangers in the bone marrow registry. Luckily, two donated umbilical cord bloods from two baby girls provided for a successful transplant. Evan responded well until:
“He picked up an infection.”

It’s almost crude, the pounding beats of the hip-hop on the radio in the corner, the swarming chatter and Cousineau telling me how her son died the day before his tenth birthday.

“I couldn’t ignore the need for all of these vital resources that can be shared by people,” she says.

She gestures for me to join her as she recruits some of the students waiting to donate blood to sign up with her foundation. Clipboards in hand, she recites a speech of facts interwoven with her own story.

She explains that bone marrow transplants are used to treat terminal diseases, that donors are matched to patients not by blood type, but by race and ethnicity. Seventy percent of the time the sibling is not a match, so the patient’s life relies on a stranger.

“Without transplants, they will die,” Cousineau says in a hard, brisk voice. Afterward her two listeners signed the forms and took the cheek swabs, but Cousineau turns to me with a grim, “It’s not always that easy.”

She says that the two main reasons people are not on the donor registry is that people haven’t heard of it or that they are scared because of the myth that it is excruciatingly painful. In truth, only 30 percent of donations involve surgery, which is performed under anesthesia. As college students, this is an opportunity we need to seize. No matter how much we throw our bodies around like meaningless dolls, the stuff that is flowing in our veins is what we can give. The hope that we have for our own futures, we can also give to patients who have lost theirs.

We shouldn’t have to feel loss to volunteer to save a life. Cousineau’s loss should be enough to compel us all.


Contact this reporter: michelle.thomas@thepantheronline.com