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Join the National Marrow Donor Registry TODAY (for free!)
Hey, have I told you that I am a bone marrow donor? There is a grant right now for ANYBODY to join the registry for free (it's usually $52). I am pushing hard for 50 people I have contact with to donate before the end of the grant deadline (which is this Monday, the 22nd of June).
You can do it in about fifteen minutes, tops. Fill out a form online BY MONDAY (if you do it after that you will have to pay)--but why not just do it now?! You join at:
marrow.org/join
then you put in the PROMO CODE: BTMLDET
...it is case sensitive, so please use all caps for the promo code. They will send you a swab kit in the mail to get a swab of your cheek cells, and that's it. You're on the registry. Simple stuff! Please PLEASE do consider joining.
If you do not qualify for the registry, and even if you DO, please consider forwarding this as an email to everybody you know, and ask them to forward it as well. The more people we get on the list, the more chances those waiting have at finding a match. Did you know that immediate family members of people waiting for a match only have a 25% chance of being a match? Not very high. Many MANY people depend on the Marrow Donor List to find a match.
My recipient was a 39 year old man with chronic myloginous leukemia, who had less than a 5% survival rate. He is still alive five years later! I did it with a six month old, a two year old, and a husband who had just come home from having a twelve pound tumor removed from his abdomen. It doesn't hurt that bad. I'm not a glutton for pain, by any means, and I was off of motrin within 48 hours (I think it was closer to 24). You are achey when you sit and stand for about a month, and sleepy for a few days after harvest. You CAN join if you are pregnant but cannot donate until you are post partum. You must be between the ages of 18 and 60 to join. Please, please copy this and send it to anybody you think would be willing to join before Monday for free! There are so many people (and some day it could be your child, your husband, your mother, your brother...) waiting for a match! We especially need people of african american, native american, hispanic/latino, pacific islander, and jewish descent (!!!) but every single person who joins is valuable.
I was on the list for ten years before I was called as a member of a pool of 8 potential matches. I turned out to be the recipient's best chance at life, and followed through with the harvest. I have an Aunt who has been on the list for fifteen years or so, and has been called four times as a potential match, but has never been the final match. You may be called the day after the registry receives your swab sample...or you may never be called. But you won't know till you try!
Please, please, please join. And have your spouse do it too, if they are willing!!! And anybody else you know. If any of you (or the people to whom you send this) have questions about the harvest process, please feel free to ask me. I will talk to you and answer any questions I can!
Thanks friends! (hey will you let me know if you or anybody you know joins, so that I can keep a tally for my goal? thanks! )
You can do it in about fifteen minutes, tops. Fill out a form online BY MONDAY (if you do it after that you will have to pay)--but why not just do it now?! You join at:
marrow.org/join
then you put in the PROMO CODE: BTMLDET
...it is case sensitive, so please use all caps for the promo code. They will send you a swab kit in the mail to get a swab of your cheek cells, and that's it. You're on the registry. Simple stuff! Please PLEASE do consider joining.
If you do not qualify for the registry, and even if you DO, please consider forwarding this as an email to everybody you know, and ask them to forward it as well. The more people we get on the list, the more chances those waiting have at finding a match. Did you know that immediate family members of people waiting for a match only have a 25% chance of being a match? Not very high. Many MANY people depend on the Marrow Donor List to find a match.
My recipient was a 39 year old man with chronic myloginous leukemia, who had less than a 5% survival rate. He is still alive five years later! I did it with a six month old, a two year old, and a husband who had just come home from having a twelve pound tumor removed from his abdomen. It doesn't hurt that bad. I'm not a glutton for pain, by any means, and I was off of motrin within 48 hours (I think it was closer to 24). You are achey when you sit and stand for about a month, and sleepy for a few days after harvest. You CAN join if you are pregnant but cannot donate until you are post partum. You must be between the ages of 18 and 60 to join. Please, please copy this and send it to anybody you think would be willing to join before Monday for free! There are so many people (and some day it could be your child, your husband, your mother, your brother...) waiting for a match! We especially need people of african american, native american, hispanic/latino, pacific islander, and jewish descent (!!!) but every single person who joins is valuable.
I was on the list for ten years before I was called as a member of a pool of 8 potential matches. I turned out to be the recipient's best chance at life, and followed through with the harvest. I have an Aunt who has been on the list for fifteen years or so, and has been called four times as a potential match, but has never been the final match. You may be called the day after the registry receives your swab sample...or you may never be called. But you won't know till you try!
Please, please, please join. And have your spouse do it too, if they are willing!!! And anybody else you know. If any of you (or the people to whom you send this) have questions about the harvest process, please feel free to ask me. I will talk to you and answer any questions I can!
Thanks friends! (hey will you let me know if you or anybody you know joins, so that I can keep a tally for my goal? thanks! )
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Join the National Marrow Donor Registry TODAY (for free!)
Glad to help where I can...as I said, I am a donor. My cousin's son is a Leukemia patient, as well. My husband had a desmoid tumor removed twice...it is an agressive reoccuring sarcoma for which the only effective treatment is currently surgical removal. When they opened him up the first time, it was to tell me how long he had left to live. The Marrow Registry called me two weeks later to tell me that I was THE match.
At that point it was very clear to me how EASY it is to donate. When you look into the eyes of somebody you LOVE and realize that some other person might someday be responsible for whether they live or die, by doing something as simple as this? It made the choice so easy. It could be him someday. Or my son. Or my brother...or a 39 year old stranger I don't know, who has their own kids and family full of people who would be lost without him. Regardless, we have the technology, it would be criminal to let them die because I didn't do something as simple as place a thread so that somebody could join and be the match. And I feel so strongly about it... (can you tell!?*sheepish*)
Ladies, we have an hour and a half left. Anybody else gonna take the simple step of filling out an online form? Save a life, or at least give us hope!