Mom has a donor!!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

As many of you know, jackelope is my older brother. We have both kept fairly quiet about this all so far on the forums, but I have to share good news that came in last night.

But first, backstory: Our mom is going to have a bone marrow transplant to treat her for myelofibrosis. The short version is that her bone marrow has slowly become less and less productive as it has been displaced with scar tissue. As such it’s putting more pressure on her spleen and stuff. Her blood cell production has taken a steady decline and the doctors finally said it was time to pursue a bone marrow transplant.

We’ve known this was coming for a while and for the last several years we had a donor lined up. But when word came and the agency handling the transplant donor matching tried to contact our donor they were unable to. So this threw us back to square 1 and we had to look for a new donor.

Donor matches are judged on 10 points of DNA, and for a transplant you want 10/10 but 9/10 does work. We had two people who were 8/10s and when the first donor fell through they were retested and found to be 9/10s. So the agency jumped on one of them and tried to get them. We’ve been waiting for news throgh the past month, and it comes in short bursts.

“We’ve got two donor choices, we’re waiting for your doctor’s team to convene and decide.”
“Alright, we have a likely donor, we’re trying to contact them”
“We’ve contacted the donor, she’s set up a time with the local office to meet with them.”
“We’re waiting on blood work to rule out any last chance of problems.”

And last night

“The donor has agreed to donate and is cleared.”

Each of the above phrases came with at least a week’s intermission, sometimes two weeks, so it has been a slow plodding process. The last sentence came last night and we were quite exhuberant and overjoyed.

The last step is for the donor to set a date, and we may have that as soon as today. We’ll see. This is the first step on a long road, hopefully one to recovery for our mom. But it’s an important step.

Prayers and good mojo would be dearly appreciated.

2

Hey man, great news!!! high fives

Surely this will make your stay at home a much less stressful one.

Good luck to your mom and the donor - hurray for modern science!!

3

Congratulations! Prayers/hope/good feelings sent your way.

I’m on the donors list, but only got to second-stage blood testing once. Maybe my time will cone to donate someday… is it still an operation with hospital stay for the donor?

4

All right! Mazel Tov!

5

Not at all. You go into the clinic and they take the bone marrow and then send you on your way. There is a bit of recovery, so they try to schedule it on a Thursday so you take Friday off and the weekend off to recover. That’s the theory at least.

6

Prayers and warm thoughts headed your way for you, your mom, Jackelope, and your dad.

7

Congratulations!!!

Um, stupid question: How does one get on a donor list? That seems like a pretty painless way to do some good, I’d like to pursue it.

8

BusGuy - You can go here for information on how to join the bone marrow registry. It is pretty painless, involves taking some blood but not much (I admit it’s been about 8 years since I was tested and put on it).

9

I’m glad to hear that you were able to find another donor! I hope the procedure goes well for your mom. I’ve been on the donor list for several years now. I’m definitely a strong advocate for organ donation and marrow donation. It’s such a small thing for the donor that could totally change the recipient’s life.

10

Correction, 4 years.

11

note to self: do a happy Snoopy dance for ronincyberpunk and jackelope’s mom when she isn’t in the presence of coworkers

I’ve tried to sign up for marrow donation previously, both in Spain and in the US, but for whatever reason neither bank called me back. Time to try again!

Nava, blood and organ donor.

12

That’s awesome Ronin! :smiley:

Best wishes!

13

Excellent news. My best of wishes! hugs

14

Great news! May whatever gods there be, be with your mother and her doctor.

15

SO that’s just pretty damned awesome news!

16

Congratulations! I got on the list last year, but FYI those of you who are trying to become donors - if you’re not an ethnic minority, it may cost you to be typed unless you go to a drive. The local coordinator the Red Cross people gave me the number of just never would call me back, so I saw a drive on the local news and went and got typed. But the easiest way to do this is to keep your ears open and go to a bone marrow drive. Why not have your workplace sponsor one, even?

17

I’m glad your mother is getting this bone marrow, and hope for great results for her.

18

Good Kharma Points to the donor’s unselfish spirit!! If more people would just sign up for this and do a donor card, there would be less misery in the world.

Good Kharma points to your mom for what she has had to endure!!
Good Kharma Points to your dad and the rest of your family!

Now I feel all happy inside for you and your family!

19

Congratulations, ronin and ronin’s mom! Better than hitting the lottery!

Occasionally there are donor drives for individual recipients to try to increase the registry for their specific ethnic group - the thought being that there is more likelihood for a match.

If you donate blood to the Red Cross, try asking them. There is some lab cost for this, but they assumed that cost when I volunteered.

As far as the painless: the literature says that it is equivalent to a bee sting. I don’t know if that is optimistic, but I know that I would still do it if it put me on my back for a week.