Interesting Story…

Out of the blue on Tuesday I got a phone call from Canadian Blood Services. The story goes like this:

A little over 10 years ago, a friend of Dylan’s was diagnosed with a blood disorder that required a bone marrow transplant. The elementary school held a clinic, where people could get “typed” to see if anyone in the neighbourhood was a close enough match. No one matched, and his friend ended up dying a few years ago. (Interestingly, she’s in the cemetery about 10 meters from Warren).

I, however, have come up as a potential match for someone else. As I understand it, the chances of a match are fairly slim, so not many people in the registry ever get the call, but on Wednesday I did.

So the process has begun, I’ve passed their phone medical history interview and on December 4, I go and get 10 vials of blood taken — half go to the transplant centre for further type checking, the other half go to check for diseases.

I’ll keep y’all up to date on the results. Admittedly, I’m a little nervous about my selection of procedures. The old standard is drawing 0.5 to 1.5 litres of marrow out of your hip (pelvis really) — which I understand can be quite painful for the next couple weeks. In the last 10 years they’ve been using a drug procedure (Filgrastim or Neupogen) that causes the marrow to grow until the bones can’t contain it and it gets into your blood stream. Then they connect you up to an apheresis machine and harvest the stem cells. The trouble with that way is that the long term effects of the drugs are unknown and I’d be signing up to yearly blood tests for the rest of my life. So the first and more painful option looks a little better. I may not get to decide though — sometimes the transplant doctor wants the cells harvested one way over the other for whatever reason.

Any comments Terry? Given the option, which way would you go?

I’m all exicted and feeling karmicly recharged!