Originally Published: 2009-05-31

Italian-Canadian Robin Rocca

Imagine you’re going about your life and your daily activities as you normally would – work, family time, sports, school, etc. Then imagine your life takes a 180-degree turn with the tragic news that you have just been diagnosed with leukemia. This was what happened to Robin Rocca, a 28-year-old Italian-Canadian from St. John, New Brunswick, who was diagnosed with the disease in December of 2008 — on the day just before Christmas.
Rocca visited Tandem’s editorial offices at Multimedia Nova Headquarters this past Tuesday, May 26 to raise awareness about his plight to find a bone marrow donor, and also to spread the word about the importance of organ donation.
“The process [organ donation] is really easy and painless, and it could save the life of one or even two Canadians, depending on the donor,” said Rocca. “While they call it ‘organ donation,’ I am actually in need of a bone marrow transplant, which is a tissue – not an organ. There are 700 other Canadians like me, who are in need of a bone marrow transplant and who have yet to find a compatible match.”
So what are the criteria for a compatible match? “It could be anyone that is in good health and between the ages of 17 and 50,” Rocca says. “Doctors will look at DNA markers – it should be a 10/10 match. Strangely though, my brother and sister, for instance, are compatible with each other, but not with me. In fact, we have family from all over the world – Toronto and Italy, specifically Calabria – who have gotten tested to see if they would be suitable donors, and unfortunately, we’ve yet to find a match.”
In fact, Rocca’s cousins from both Canada and Italy have resorted to Facebook (the Canadian group is entitled, “Stem Cell Donors Needed ASAP – Robin Rocca is Searching for a Match Now!”), to spread awareness about their cousin’s urgent need to find a bone marrow donor.
“Ethnicity is a major variable in deciphering how compatible a match would be,” Rocca says, “since individuals from the same geographical locations tend to have the same genetic makeup. In my case, an ideal donor would be of Mediterranean origin – although he or she would not have to be from Calabria or Italy. Just look at the situation with my family – my own siblings and relatives were not a match, so you really never know whether you could be a match until you get tested.”

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