Maggie MacMahon spikes a ball over the net during a match last season. The Maine Maritime Academy junior recently donated bone marrow after discovering she was a match for a patient in Belgium. Courtesy of Tony Llerena Photography
Castine—Maine Maritime Academy junior Maggie MacMahon took to the volleyball court for preseason last week, the same as she has done since starting her career as a Mariner. The difference this year is that she was spiking balls just eight days after donating bone marrow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
MacMahon took part in a blood drive at Maine Maritime Academy last year, during which she took a swab test to find out if she could be a match for someone who needed a bone marrow transplant. The chances were so slim that she forgot about it, but she got the call over the summer that she was a match for a patient in Belgium.
“I knew right away when I got the call that it was something I had to do,” said MacMahon.
Her decision was met with some resistance from her family, but MacMahon said once they saw she had made her decision, they were “super supportive.”
Five days before the procedure, MacMahon was given a drug to increase her white blood cells. The drug caused her to experience some intense back pain, nausea and other flu-like symptoms. Though the side effects caused her some discomfort, MacMahon said they went away fairly quickly.
MacMahon’s Mariner volleyball family supported her throughout, as her teammates Maria Perez and Hannah Butland went with her to Boston for the procedure, and coach Trisha Carver told her she had the entire team behind her.
“When she told me about it, I was somewhere between totally proud and humbled, and really protective,” said Carver. “I wanted her to make sure she knew the full extent of what she was getting into. But we told her that even if she had to do it the day before a conference championship, that’s what she was going to do. Volleyball didn’t matter.”
MacMahon said the experience has opened her eyes to the amount of people who are in need of bone marrow transplants, and how many struggle to find a match. She said that before she took the test last year, she did not know much about the procedure at all.
“I would encourage people to just get tested to see if they are a match,” said MacMahon. “There are so many people out there who are sick and in need of these transplants, and you just never know.”
MacMahon said that one of the deciding factors in making the decision to donate was her own childhood and upbringing.
“I look back very fondly on my childhood,” she said. “I grew up in a family that had lots of joy and life. You don’t get very many chances to help people in this way, and I decided that if I was going to have the opportunity to help save someone’s life and make them healthy again, I was going to do it.”
MacMahon now turns her attention to the volleyball season, as the team opens up competition with a home match against the University of Southern Maine at 6 p.m. Friday, August 31. The team enters the season as the defending North Atlantic Conference champions, beating Colby-Sawyer College 3-1 in the finals last year.
Maine Maritime Academy junior volleyball player Maggie MacMahon recently donated bone marrow after discovering she was a match for a patient in Belgium. By Monique Labbe