N.J. Stem Cell Transplant Nurse Donates Her Own Stem Cells to Save a Stranger (Exclusive)

New Jersey nurse Julie Zgola couldn’t wait to swab her cheek and join the national stem cell donor registry. After working with stem cell transplant patients since 2022, she knew all too well the impact a transplant could have on a stranger’s life. So she registered with NMDP (formerly known as the National Marrow Donor Program and Be The Match).

In October 2024, she received the voicemail she had been waiting for: She matched with a patient who had leukemia.

“My co-workers and I, we listened to it a few times just in disbelief,” says Zgola, 30-year-old assistant nurse manager for the Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy division at the John Theurer Cancer Center opened at Jersey Shore University Medical Center.

“We go into nursing because we want to help people, and there’s always a limit as to how much you can do,” she says. “So if I can go that one step further, I feel like I’ve done absolutely everything in my power to be a wonderful nurse.”

She shared the good news of becoming a donor with her colleague, Dr. Michele Donato, Chief of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy at the John Theurer Cancer Center.

“As a team, the nurse and the doctors, we are so engaged in saving these patients’ lives, the fact that Julie would become one of the donors was quite incredible — but I’m not surprised,” says Donato. “She is so kind. If she’s your nurse, she’s going to treat you like she’s your neighbor. She is like a ray of sunshine. She’s warm, she’s friendly, she really tries to make the day better, but also she engages with them in the trenches.”

Donato notes that another stem cell transplant nurse, Emily Coiro — who PEOPLE wrote about recently — also donated her stem cells to save a stranger’s life.

Zgola says she forms close relationships with all her patients. They are often under her care for a few months, so she celebrates birthdays, anniversaries and holidays with them.

“They are going through the hardest time in their lives,” Zgola says. “They wake up every morning and they fight and they try their hardest. And we fight alongside with them.”

She encourages patients when they receive treatment or holds their hand when they’re having a hard day.

But Zgola has also comforted patients whose donors fall through. And it breaks her heart.

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“I’ve seen patients have a donor set up and then the donor falls through for sickness or pregnancy, or they just decide, “I can’t do this anymore,” she says. “It’s really hard for us, as the nurses, to see that because we work so hard to get them ready for transplant. And if everything’s ready to go and then the donor says, ‘Sorry, I can’t do this,’ I feel personally offended. I know that sounds really terrible, but I’m like, ‘What? We’ve got so far, we were so close.’ And once you get to that point, there may be no turning back for these patients. They could be in remission once and then never again. And now you’ve lost your window.”

Armed with this knowledge, Zgola was determined to make her own donation process go smoothly. She actively fought to keep everything on schedule.

“These patients are essentially trusting you with their entire lives to cure them. They’re inspirational.”

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In February 2025, Zgola arrived at the cancer center, got a central line inserted and donated her stem cells.

Now that she has been a donor, she feels a special connection to her patients. “You don’t really know what it feels like until it happens,” she says. “I can now relate.”

“It makes me happy that I was able to help somebody,” she says. “You give somebody a second chance at life. Without the transplant, the patient’s leukemia can come back. So really, it’s the transplant that gets rid of the cancer. Knowing that someone in this world gets a second chance because I was willing to donate, that makes me feel good.”

She is sharing her story to urge people to swab their cheeks and join the NMDP registry.

“They need more donors,” she says. “One person can make a difference.”