St Valentine's Day

Boom boo-de Boom

An appropriate day to pay homage to the Generosity and Altruism of Bone Marrow Donors, one of whom is having the stem cells harvested from his blood tomorrow for my benefit.

The donation process involves having a short course of injections to stimulate the stem cells from the bone marrow into the bloodstream so that they can be collected more easily.  These jabs can cause flu-like symptoms temporarily.  The actual collection of the stem cells typically takes about four hours, and involves taking the blood from one arm, passing it through a machine which separates and collects the stem cells, and then replacing the blood into the other arm.  So the donor is sitting for several hours with a cannula in each arm while this process takes place, before taking a few days off for recuperation.

So it's certainly not as simple or as easy as giving blood and requires the donor to take several days out of his or her normal life in order to accomplish this undeniable Labour of Love for someone he or she has never seen and doesn't know.  The whole process is conducted anonymously, so all I know about my donor is that he is a 25-year-old male from the UK.  I can only guess at his motives, but am enormously impressed and grateful in equal measure.


Sorry........couldn't resist it



All my three siblings very generously volunteered to be tissue-typed to see if their bone marrow matched mine and all were prepared to donate their marrow for me.  But since it turned out that none of them was a match, the Marsden contacted the Anthony Nolan Trust and found that I had no fewer than 722 matched donors on their register.  This is a much higher number than normal (typically a recipient will have matched unrelated donors in double or single figures) and enabled the Marsden not only to pick a donor whose tissue type matched mine perfectly but also to choose one with other medically useful matching characteristics.

And if his golf handicap is lower than mine and he can pass on that ability too, it would be a welcome bonus...

There's more information on www.anthonynolan.org