I donated bone marrow

I didn't actually tell a ton of people, but yeah, a few weeks back I donated bone marrow since I was a good match with a stranger with a life threatening blood disease like leukemia. Not the 'stick a huge needle in your bones and extract marrow' type, more like the 'take shots for a few days and give blood' type. There was a bit more to it than that, but you get the idea.

Okay, let's back up to the beginning. Several years ago shortly after I got married, my wife's friend's dad went through some battles with leukemia. He needed a transplant or two and she convinced my wife and I that we should sign up for a marrow registry (Be the Match) to help out people like him. We swabbed our cheeks and sent it off in the mail. It was quick, it was free, and we didn't really think much of it after that. Many years later, I got a call that said I was a good match with a ~70 year old guy I didn't know with a similar disease. I had lots of questions of course, but I soon decided to donate. I figured I'm relatively young and healthy, why not help somebody? What really sealed the deal was the description of the process. It's called apheresis and really similar to giving blood plasma. They hook you up to an IV and a machine that separates your blood, then feeds it back to you, no surgery or anesthesia necessary. Wait, but I thought you gave bone marrow, you say? Well...sort of. I technically gave blood stem cells, which is what the shots from the days before told my body to start producing more of. They took out all the extra blood stem cells with apheresis and I was back to normal pretty much by the end of the day.

Let's see, other questions that people ask about? I did have to travel for the donation. I got on a plane on a Sunday night, did the donation on Monday morning, and flew back Tuesday morning. I was pretty exhausted that Monday afternoon, but I was actually feeling pretty good by that night. The shots for 5 days leading up to it were actually a bit more of a pain than the recovery. Since I had an excess of blood stem cells, I had some pain and stiffness in my lower back, and an occasional mild headache. During the actual apheresis they set me up to watch a few movies and it was a bit uncomfortable at times, but never really painful.

I'm looking forward to hearing how it went for the recipient. Usually that's around a month after the donation. Different organizations have different policies on contact between donors and recipients, but Be the Match doesn't allow contact until a year after, I believe. All I know about him is age, gender, and his disease. All he knows about me is age and gender. I'm sure they have good reasons for their rules, but it was almost too disconnected for me. I had to remind myself a few times that I was doing this for some guy out there that was relying on me. He had to go through severe chemotherapy right before my donation to completely kill off his immune system so that he'd be able to accept my stem cells. He actually gets my immune system and blood type after this. If I had backed out at that point he'd almost surely have died. Even with the donation the odds are around 50% survival, but that's literally his best option.

I decided that my motivation for doing this had a lot to do with my wife, 2 year old daughter, and my dad. I really like spending time with those girls and I'd want someone else to get as much time as possible with the people they love. Plus I want her to grow up in a world where people do stuff like this for other people. My dad died from cancer more than 10 years ago. I would have loved to have the ability for some kind of transplant to cure him but that wasn't an option in his case.

You might think about signing up. If you're under 40, the entry and cheek swab kit from Be the Match is free. They're slightly more likely to call if you're younger and male, just because men have more marrow and have more to donate. Minorities and people of mixed race are in even more demand, since the percentages of donors in the database mirrors the population as a whole.