Cameron Scroggins' mother Trina Robinson, friend Jodie Thompson and aunt Megan Arthur, from left, hosted a bone marrow donor drive in his honor last week. Fifteen-year-old Scroggins is in desperate need of a bone marrow donor to help him fight life-threatening cancer.Fifteen-year-old Cameron Scroggins is fighting for his life, and your DNA may make the difference.
After being diagnosed earlier this year with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the Gordon Lee High School student recently found out the chemo therapy he has been receiving stopped working. In order to continue fighting the cancer, he needs a bone marrow donor with a 100 percent match to his profile.
"We've got to find a donor or he will die," said his mother Trina Robinson. "It's a simple cheek swab test [to determine compatibility]."
This week, Robinson, along with others, held a blood and bone marrow donor drive at Constitution Hall in Fort Oglethorpe, but they aren't stopping there. Robinson is encouraging anyone and everyone to go to any Blood Assurance location throughout the region to get tested as a donor for Scroggins.
There is a good chance one of his siblings will be a match to donate, but it takes six weeks for the results to come in. If they don't match, Robinson said they can't wait another six weeks to help her son get better.
"The mass has doubled in size in four weeks," she said in regards to his condition. "That is what has made it so urgent. He is undergoing a very extensive series of chemo right now."
Even though her son has had an extremely difficult journey and faced nearly every complication possible, he has remained strong, she said.
"He's been that 1 percent kid. If there was 1 percent something was going to go wrong, it has" said Robinson. "He's the strongest kid I know. I would've given up a long time ago. ... He still holds strong to our faith and the fact that he's going to beat this."
In addition to hosting the blood and bone marrow donor drive, supporters of Scroggins are selling T-shirts and encouraging people to post on the Facebook page called Prayers for Cameron Scroggins.
"He's very sick right now," said Robinson. "But if people can send words of encouragement, that's huge for him to see that."