Buddy, Can You Spare Some Marrow?

A writing colleague, Marijke Durning, blogged yesterday about registering to become a bone marrow donor. It's a very comprehensive post about how important it is and what's involved, so I'm not going to repeat all that information here. I urge you to check out the information on her blog.

I registered to be a donor about 15 years ago, after the husband of a friend of mine passed away from lymphoma at the much too early age of 31. He had received a marrow transplant, but unfortunately he developed an infection before his immune system had fully regained its strength.

Shortly after I registered, I got called in because I was a first-level match for someone, which is a 1 in a 100 chance. They took blood from me to do more detailed tests and I wasn't a close enough match to move on to the next stage.

Then, a few months later, I got called again because this time I was a second-stage match, which is a 1 in 20,000 chance! They drew a LOT more blood this time and, again, I wasn't close enough. Of course, now that they've run that level of tests on me and have it in their records, they would never call me again unless I actually was the best match for a specific patient. That hasn't happened.

In the States, you can learn more about marrow donation and register at the National Marrow Donor Program Web site. In Canada, the OneMatch program is run by Canadian Blood Services.

Blog of the Day

Since I've already highlighted the two blogs that would have some relationship to this topic, today I'll simply post a link to Sue Poremba's blog, I Breathe; Therefore, I Write. Sue is another freelance writing colleague and her posts reflect her personal experiences and thoughts about the writing life.