My journey as a Hispanic bone marrow donor: Reporter's Notebook

ABC News immigration reporter and producer Armando Garcia shares his experience as a bone marrow donor and why ethnicity could play a crucial role.

"I'm sorry, I think my veins are camera shy," I joked to the nurse who was having trouble finding the right place on my hand for an IV.

I was surrounded by cameras and wearing nothing but a gown and some unflattering yellow socks that all patients are required to wear at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. The awkwardness of having several people in the hospital room and the discomfort of the bone marrow donation I was about to undergo was all voluntary and for a good reason: to give a stranger a second chance at life.

Three months prior to the procedure, the Be The Match Registry, a list of millions of prospective blood stem cell and bone marrow donors operated by the Minneapolis-based National Marrow Donor Program, informed me via email that I was a potential blood stem cell match for a patient. I had been on the registry for nearly a decade and this was the third time I was a possible match for a patient, but it would be the first time I actually got to donate.

Early on, I decided to approach this experience not just as a donor but also a reporter. I'm an immigration reporter and producer for ABC News, and learning as much as I could about the donation process kept the focus off my nervousness. I learned that as a Mexican male on the registry, I was part of an astonishing minority. Latinos are severely underrepresented when it comes to bone marrow donors. Of the 9 million U.S. registered donors on the Be The Match Registry, only 13% are Latino compared to 57% who identify as white.