By Sean McDevitt
FightingIllini.com

Two students were honored during the University of Illinois Football game versus Minnesota on Saturday. They didn't catch a pass for a touchdown or hit a three-pointer to win a game. They aren't even student-athletes. And while oftentimes fans look to student-athletes as ideal representatives of the University, these two young men should also be considered.

Jimmy Rancich went through the nightmare of being diagnosed twice with Cancer and beat it with help from doctors, nurses and a donor from Germany.

Joey Dickinson was convinced to sign-up to be a donor and was lucky enough to be able to help save the life of a baby who needed a bone marrow transplant.

Each took on challenges they never dreamed they'd have to face. Each endured pain and sacrifice. Most importantly, both are living proof of the benefits of being on the Be The Match Registry.

The Be The Match Registry is the world's largest and most diverse donor registry with more than 19 million potential marrow donors and more than 249,000 cord blood units. Every search provides patients with access to a total of more than 30 million potential donors and more than 742,000 cord blood units on the Be The Match Registry and global registries worldwide.

Match Up

A recruiting drive and a friend already on the list convinced Joey Dickinson to join the Be The Match Registry.

"So I had a friend who's in the Be The Match club and she sort of encouraged me to join and told me a little bit about it," said Dickinson. "After hearing some stories, I figured, you know, there is so little impact on me, but it could be a huge impact on someone else."

A year later he got the call. His response was swift.

"My immediate reaction was a little twinge of nervousness, but I read up on the subject and I knew it was going to be fine," Dickinson said. "My family took a little bit of convincing. They were scared about it, but I was like 'Hey, I'm doing this and I really hope you support me in it.' I actually know a couple of friends who after I donated signed up for the registry as well."

Dickinson stayed with family in Madison, Wisconsin to prepare for surgery. Because the recipient of his bone marrow was a baby, Dickinson had to go through a surgical procedure for extraction.

At the beginning the semester in mid-September of last year, Dickinson spent a long weekend (his birthday weekend, no less) in Wisconsin driving to Madison, providing the donation, recovering from the surgery, and heading back in time to not miss his Wednesday classes.

Dickinson said at the time, "I told people it was like I hit myself really hard on a corner of a table and I felt like I was bruised at those two places. Other than that, it was a little uncomfortable to walk but not debilitating."

When asked what he would tell others about taking part themselves in the Be The Match Registry, he said others should consider what was best for them but he personally wouldn't hesitate. "If I got the call again I would 100 percent answer it."

Movies and More

Jimmy Rancich grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois, a small suburb outside of the city. At 17, he loved movies, playing sports and hanging out with friends.

One day, he noticed a lump that wasn't there before.

"I gave it a little bit of time, a couple weeks, and it wasn't going away.," said Rancich. "So I told my Dad. And he was all let's go to the doctor."

After visiting his pediatrician and going through a battery of tests, he learned it was extranodal T cell lymphoma. Rancich said, "The doctors actually knew it was cancerous as soon as they took the tumor out. But to be sure the pathology showed it was T cell lymphoma."

Rancich went through five rounds of chemo and six weeks of radiation. At the end of it, he was ready to be given the life-saving stem cells. The hard part was finding a near-perfect or perfect match.

"So we searched everywhere," said Rancich. "My sister, who was at the U of I at the time, she and one of our good friends held a blood drive on campus. My Dad held one at his work. We held several in Park Ridge. And my family wasn't a match. No one that we swabbed during those drives was a match. My match came from Germany. The German match was a nine out of ten."

The procedure was done on January 20, 2014. A date he calls his rebirth. A long road to recovery started and he was finally cleared to come home in early April. Over the next few months, he would get stronger and healthier. Occasionally, he would sneak out to the movies.

"That's my favorite thing to do," said Rancich. "We'd Lysol all the seats and everything. And then one day we went in for a checkup and I was wearing a Kermit the Frog shirt. We had just gone to see the new Muppets movie. So my doctor is with us and while the nurses were working on the computer, my doctor goes, 'Oh, I like Kermit the Frog' and then the nurse said, 'There's a new movie out.' My Mom couldn't hold back and said, 'We just saw it!' but we weren't supposed to be at the movies at all. My doctor was not happy. We all laugh about it now, but it wasn't funny at the time."

By the time Fall came around, Rancich was back to doing normal high school activities. He was even cleared to go to Homecoming.

And then his vision was gone in one eye. He had trouble in physical therapy. He thought he was having a stroke.

"My mom called my doctor," said Rancich. We did an MRI of my head and there was a tumor in my left and my right occipital lobe. They did a biopsy because we had to know what it was for sure and it turned out to be a B cell lymphoma. My initial lymphoma didn't come back. It was just due to my weakened immune system. I mean, everyone's got cancer cells inside their body, it's just most of the time our immune systems are able to fight it."

Initially, the chemo was not working and the family was looking into non-invasive treatment options. "We were really worried that it was going to affect my brain in some way," said Rancich. "And then all of a sudden it just started shrinking. By about May it was gone."

Today, he's nearly four years removed from his last procedure and after two years the risk for relapse is significantly lower. At Illinois, he's been working on a documentary about cancer.

"My documentary concept follows cancer patients, day in and day out, showing more of the ugly stuff of what cancer fighters go through," Rancich said. "So, in turn, I've thought about how this would help people who are about to go in their fight, who don't have any firsthand experience, and that, in a sense as they watch it,will be their firsthand experience. The goal is to help them feel not as blind as everyone does going into it."

From Rancich's perspective, being a donor on Be The Match Registry was a life or death decision. He said, "My cancer was fast growing and without a stem cell transplant, I'd either still be fighting or dead. So by signing up and swabbing, by using what God gifted you with… it's just your DNA... you could be saving people's lives."

If you would like to be a part of the Be The Match Registry, you can join for free at https://join.bethematch.org/LearfieldUI or by texting "ILLINI" to 888111.