(Ben Tompkins/northeastNOW)

By Ben Tompkins

Hope For Archer

Tisdale hosts stem cell drive for Kelvington teen

Aug 19, 2023 | 12:00 PM

The Tisdale RecPlex lobby was the spot to try and help Archer Franklin Friday evening.

His aunt and uncle, Lesley and Regan Martens, hosted a stem cell drive looking for potential matches for him.

Franklin, a 17-year-old from Kelvington, was diagnosed with Aplastic anemia back in June, which has since destroyed his bone marrow.

The former U18 AA Humboldt Broncos, who is heading into grade 12 this year, is now in need of a stem cell transplant.

The ‘Hope for Archer’ event saw people, ages 17-35, come in for about 10-15 minutes and get their cheeks swabbed.

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Tests will now get sent to the Canadian Blood Services and those who are a match, whether it be for Franklin or someone else, will get contacted.

The matching donor would then be required to give blood in a four to six-hour procedure in 90 per cent of the cases.

northeastNOW reporter Ben Tompkins attended the event and got swabbed, while also speaking to a couple of locals who did the same.

(Ben Tompkins/northeastNOW)

Scean Gallo and Phil Kehrig both work with Viterra in Tisdale and were made aware of the event, courtesy of one of their co-workers.

“(Franklin) is a co-worker’s high school friend’s son, I believe is what the connection is, so she kind of got on all of our cases to come and we got no excuse not to. It was pretty quick and painless, so if that’s all it takes to make a huge difference for somebody that’s facing something that sounds pretty terrible, it’s a pretty small gesture that I think otherwise healthy people can make a small sacrifice for somebody else,” Kehrig said.

This stem cell drive isn’t the first one to happen, as a get-swabbed event happened in Humboldt last weekend, and another happened in Kelvington back in July.

Gallo told northeastNOW, however, that having this one in Tisdale made it so much easier to support.

“A lot easier, we would have probably needed to take a lot more time off to drive somewhere, so this was nice and easy and we could sneak away for a quick 10 minutes… it’s only 10 minutes of our time to maybe save somebody’s life. I just heard of it and thought I’d do my part to see if I could help, and if I end up being a match, I would definitely be willing to go through that next process.”

The stem cell drive saw roughly five people get swabbed in the first 20 minutes and 10 in the first 45.

Lesley and Regan Martens were there for the full four hours and had about 55 test kits handy.

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news@northeastnow.com

On Twitter @BenTompkins_8