USC LT Austin Jackson: 'It was really a blessing. It was really a godsend'

USC left tackle Austin Jackson says he's known for about a year that he would likely have to undergo surgery at some point to donate bone marrow to his younger sister Autumn.

The timetable was up to her doctors, when the tests indicated it was best to go through with it. Autumn, who is a year and a half younger, has lived with Diamond-Blackfan anemia, which is described as a rare inherited bone marrow failure syndrome, and has undergone regular blood transfusions since she was 12 or 13, he explained.

So when he learned there was something he could do to help her, it was an easy decision.

"There was no hesitation. That's my baby sister," Jackson said Friday after USC's first preseason practice, discussing the procedure publicly for the first time.

Jackson said after being confirmed as a the best match, he had essentially been on standby for whenever the doctors determined Autumn was ready for the bone marrow transplant. It was initially supposed to happen in June and then got moved to early July.

He seemed to carry a burden off his shoulders in sharing that the procedure went as hoped.

"I was thankful [I was a match]. It was really a blessing, it was really a godsend. There's like 12 critereas through blood that you match and I matched all 12. That pretty much ensures that her body will accept the cells that I give her," Jackson said. "She's doing great. She [was] supposed to be in the hospital for about three months … Her body accepted the cells so she got sent home a month earlier."

And Jackson returned to USC, eager to reacclimate back into a competitive college football environment.

"I kind of have to come back out here and start my life back up, make sure my team's ready for the season. That's my focus now, really. That's my main focus," he said. "My family told me to trust that my sister's going to be OK, they're going to take care of her. Now my job is to hold down the left side and win a championship."

Jackson, a junior returning starter at left tackle, is now the veteran presence on the USC offensive line, the keystone for a unit that hopes to be much better this season.

He went through the first half of practice Friday before being held out of the team run and team pass portions. He deferred a question about his timetable to head coach Clay Helton, who seemed to indicate it could be a day-by-day evaluation.

"Everybody heals different. I know he's been working out well. We've been a little bit careful today, we're going to ease him back in the right way. We did that with a couple players as you saw today," Helton said. "… But he got some limited worked today, looked like he felt really good from it, so we'll do a little bit more tomorrow and keep building."

It was a 3.5 surgery Jackson underwent back home in Phoenix that he said involved creating three holes in his lower back to extract the bone marrow to be transplanted to his sister.

He wasn't sure of any relevant examples of football players undergoing such a procedure so soon before a season, but he says the USC trainers and doctors in Phoenix all told him he'd recover without issue. He noted that a normal recovery time is around seven days, but because his procedure ended up being "more strenuous" he was told two to three weeks and it's been a little more than three weeks now.

Regardless of the scheduling implications or what it would mean football-wise, this was something he knew he needed to do and he had let Helton know about it when he first learned it was a probability.

"Just growing up, being an older brother, you're told to protect your little sister. I would say it's in my personality too," he said.

"She's a fighter. She's really tough. She's used to getting blood transfusions every three weeks for most of her life. She's just been fighting all this, taking everything as it comes. There's countless stories of stuff that could have went wrong and stuff that did go wrong, but she fought through it all and she doesn't really complain much at all."

Jackson also shared what that first moment was like when he came out of the surgery and talked to Autumn for the first time.

"I saw her right after I got out. I went upstairs and saw her, and it's unreal. You don't know what's going to happen after. I'd say it's pretty emotional.," he said. "We're not a big crying family so there wasn't a whole lot of that. You're definitely just thankful for the whole opportunity -- really excited for what's to come."