Bill Pomeroy was diagnosed with Leukemia in October 2004. Doctors gave him two months to live. They told him that without a bone marrow transplant, there wasn’t much hope of survival.

‘So we waited,’ he said.

Then, in May 2005, he got a call one afternoon while sitting at home with his wife, Sandra. They’d found a match.

‘We just jumped for joy and said, ‘OK, we finally have a chance to win this.”

A year after Pomeroy’s transplant, he met his donor. The young man came to Syracuse from Texas. ‘We had a hell of a party,’ Pomeroy said. ‘The guy really had no idea he had saved a family. No idea how important it was to a patient, to their family, to their world.’

Five years since his diagnosis, Pomeroy is back on his feet. His white blood cell count is normal and he’s made it his mission to bring those good news phone calls to as many people as possible.

On Wednesday, Pomeroy took part in the fifth annual ‘Light the Night Walk’ in Clinton Square in downtown Syracuse. The event raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, committed to cancer research, financial assistance and programming for families who have a member diagnosed with the disease. Participants walked around downtown Syracuse holding balloons.

White for survivors. Red for supporters. Gold in memory.

The event consisted of an opening ceremony, a two-mile walk, a remembrance ceremony as well as a bone marrow station where people could put their names on a donor transplant list.

Pomeroy manned this station. He got 60 people to sign up in 60 minutes. Lengthening that list and bringing bone marrow drives nationwide has become a life mission for him.

He said that for every 10 people that need a transplant, only three actually get one.

‘I was lying there in the hospital bed thinking if I get through this, I’m going to do something.’

Lauren Conboy, a senior biology major and the service chair for Phi Sigma Pi Honors Fraternity attended the event with 12 of her fellow members.

Conboy is pre-med and said the medical research component of the event was one reason she got involved. The other – and more important motivation – is her seven-year-old cousin who died of cancer.

‘I can empathize with a lot of what these people have gone through,’ Conboy said.

One woman approached Conboy’s registration table and got a little choked up talking about her sister, who had passed away from Leukemia in December.

‘I said to her, ‘I don’t doubt that your sister is proud of you and the way you’re here supporting the cause and fighting this fight so that others don’t have to lose their loved ones,’ she said.

jmterrus@syr.edu

Published on September 16, 2009 at 12:00 pm