Mackenna Drazich walks through the library with a confidence only someone in their senior year could possess, passing students reviewing notecards and highlighting textbooks. She almost blends in among typical college students as she discusses her lifelong love of mac-and-cheese, her family and her enduring passion for sports as a former member of the women’s basketball team. 

But the story she holds is far from average. 

Beneath her red basketball hoodie is a tattoo on her lower back. The design of doves, a Bible verse and flowers, however, is more than artwork. 

Each of the four flowers of her tattoo are placed where a needle was plunged her spine when she donated her bone marrow to a complete stranger.  

She sits, prepared to speak of how luck led her to saving a woman’s life, though it’s a story she has repeated many times before. 

“I get more empowered every time I tell it,” Drazich said. 

When God, according to Drazich, brought together her and Andrea, a stranger at the time of donation, she became more than just a student, lifelong athlete or friend. By a one-in-a-billion chance, Drazich, in a self-described miracle, saved a sick woman’s life.  

In September of her sophomore year, Drazich attended the Health Fair, admittedly on a whim. She nonchalantly signed up for Be the Match’s donor program, as it so happened to have a booth that caught her eye. She never anticipated the call she would receive, just two months later, requesting bloodwork to determine the full extent of her mysterious potential match.  

When Drazich answered that call, she had a “feeling from God” that the most viable match would be her. 

“I just knew it was going to be me,” Drazich said. “I remember telling my mom about it and saying ‘Mom, I know I am going to be the one.’” 

She would later discover that her intuition was correct; that she was the selected match for her donor. To be a selected match, according to Drazich, they look for a similarity of 80 percent or above. Drazich happened to be a 100 percent match.

“You are only matched 100 percent to one to two people in the entire world,” Drazich said. “It makes it even more of a miracle.”

Drazich clung to three select thoughts as she continued to go through rigorous rounds of bloodwork during her hectic school schedule and was further scouted for her bone marrow. 

34. Female. Severe aplastic anemia. 

That was all the information the organization could provide to Drazich about her match, due to privacy restrictions. The three microscopic bites of who her recipient was were too vague to be even considered as a description. 

To Drazich, the information was heart-wrenching. Enough so for her to go through seven months of testing and four needles placed in her spine to draw out two quarts of bone marrow. 

Drazich only learned Andrea’s name over a year after surgery when they both elected to withdraw their privacy rights. Andrea, as Drazich learned, had been ill throughout her life. The recipient was more than three chunks of random information; she was a mother and wife who had survived having two holes in her heart and intense chemo.

This time Andrea, described by Drazich as “petite and bubbly,” was in need of a bone marrow donation. She was counting on Drazich, who was located approximately 780 miles away in Allegheny General Hospital, and just waking up from surgery. 

According to Drazich, the recovery after-surgery took longer than expected. She was reminded of her donation when she would walk upstairs and feel looming tiredness as her body replenished bone marrow. It followed her for weeks after surgery.  

For Drazich, the pain was worth it. 34. Female. Severe aplastic anemia. 

As the pain faded, the curiosity within her about her match grew. 

“We finally got to Facetime, and it was just incredible,” Drazich said. “We ended up talking for over an hour and a half.” 

As Drazich continues to heal and tell her story, she has since met Andrea and her family, and continues to greet the nurse that took her saliva sample that unknowingly changed her life over three years ago. 

“I would do it again,” Drazich said. “I would do it for anybody.” 

Drazich jokes that she hates to talk about herself in this context, saying that it makes herself look like too much of a hero. But, to Andrea, Drazich is. To the very bone.