What really hurts is reading past posts that should have been proofed first, yowch!
I gotta mention that registration for minorities is free. Sounds discriminatory but there just aren’t many donors for certain ethnicities.
Some years ago (maybe 6 or 7?), my oldest daughter had a “condition” that might have been leukemia. It turned out to be something much more benign, thank Og, but she had to have bone marrow drawn from her hip to check.
They used “conscious sedation” on her, which is generally a combo of narcotic pain meds and benzodiazapines. We allowed her to take a friend along, and I heard her talking to her friend through the whole procedure, just chatting away. So it couldn’t have hurt too very much. Due to the 'diazapines, though, she didn’t remember a thing after the drugs wore off.
Unfortunately, my body is very resistant to 'diazapines, so conscious sedation is next to useless for me.
Best of luck to your family!
Thanks for the replies everyone! I figure pain to some extent varies from person to person, and it seems like there are a number of different methods of dulling it that crop up on the websites. Local or general anesthetic, epidural or benzodiazapines as norinew said. I will ask the doctor when they finally sort out the appointment, it’s a huge hassle as I live quite far from him so we have to wait for the hospitals to talk to each other. I’m finding the subject pretty interesting now actually, heard from a family friend that after his bone marrow transplant he had a completely different blood type than before. I just assumed you had to be the same blood type, its pretty amazing to me that the body can do that. Any blood experts around that can explain how/why this happens?
Your bone marrow is the site of origin of your blood cells (red and white). Say you’re A pos and you need a marrow transplant. What they do is, before they give you the donor marrow, they irradiate your marrow to kill off the existing pluripotent blood cells. You’re essentially living with no more capacity to make new blood or an immune system. They HLA match some donor (who could be any blood type) and put this in through IV. It takes up residence in the marrow (hopefully) and begins dividing. You now have the blood type of the donor.