Ever wondered what it would be like to save a life?

Three women are giving Americans that chance by traveling across the United States collecting stem cell samples to find a match for people who need a bone marrow transplant.

American sisters Sam and Alex Kimura and their friend Taylor Shorten spoke to CTV's Canada AM from Louisville, Ky., to spread awareness about how easy and painless the life-saving procedure is.

The group Sharing America's Marrow (SAM) started in 2010, when Sam Kimura was told she had severe aplastic anemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. She was 17 at the time and finishing high school.

The diagnosis wasn't only a blow to Sam, but her sister Alex who tried to donate and wasn't a match. To try and find a suitable donor, Alex started setting up blood drives. That's when the girls became aware of the pressing need, as well as the misconceptions associated with donating.

"Before I got sick we had no idea about this huge need for more donors on the registry," Sam said Tuesday. "It's nothing like what people make it out to be."

A big part of finding more donors is getting over the image that donating means having a giant needle drilled into your spine, Sam said, explaining that stem cells can be taken from a blood sample.

For a liquid bone marrow donation, the donor is anesthetized and the marrow is extracted from the pelvic bone. The procedure is painless, lasts an hour or two, and the donor can leave the same day with a bit of stiffness afterwards, Sam said.

So far, the group have taken their donor-mobile "Maggie" to 22 states, where they have registered 9,000 potential donors and found 40 matches.

They hope to reach all 50 states and collect 50,000 registered potential donors by the end of 2015.

"We just know that there is a huge need out there for thousands, millions more donors," said Alex.

Sam is in remission, but must take 25 pills per day to keep it that way. The group is still on the hunt to find her a bone marrow match, but don't plan on giving up soon.

"It's incredibly rare to be a match in the first place," she said, "but you could be the one person in the world to save somebody's life."