Bone Marrow donation

Umm, Hi, this is Chris. If you haven't guessed by now, Dianna is the mastermind behind our family blog. She asked me to start this entry out and talk about my experience over the last few days. Well, it started about 15 years ago when I was thinking about my uncle Bob who died of Leukemia. I wanted to be on the bone marrow donor list just in case one day I could help someone like uncle Bob. So we looked it up and had to drive all the way to Salt Lake City (from Provo) and then they made us pay like 25/30 bucks a piece and to top it all off they didn't even validate our parking. I hope they've gotten better. But hey, at the end of the day I was on the list. So, fast forward 15 years to about a month ago when I got a call out of the blue from someone down in the bay area in California. She asked some questions about my health and then told me that I was a perfect match for a woman in that area that needed a bone marrow transplant. I was so excited and nervous but eager to help.

Did you know that you don't have to get your hip drilled into to give bone marrow? That was a relief, not that I'm not tough enough to handle it but I might have cried and that would have been embarrassing. Anyway, what they do now is give you an injection once a day for a week that stimulates stem cell production and then at the end of the 5 days they hook you up to a machine for about 6 hours that sucks your blood out, spins it around, and then pumps it back in. I haven't made it that far so I can't say more about it right now. I am, however, on day two of the shots which are supposedly the worst part. They kind of freaked me out when they told me about getting nauseous, headaches, flu like bone aches, etc. I envisioned an experience similar to when Wolverine had all of his bones melted away and replaced with adamantium. Ouch. Thankfully it hasn't been bad at all (yet). You know how when someone scratches a blackboard and you get the chills? Well, imagine that but in your bones. It feels a little tingly I guess, especially in my skull. Weird. Beyond that I haven't felt that bad. My lower back is killing me but it hurts often and I'm not entirely sure if it's the medicine or just me. But, you know what? I would gladly experience 10 or 100 times the discomfort with the knowledge that I could be a part of saving someone's life. Somewhere down in the San Fransisco area there is a women who is battling Leukemia and right now is going through intensive radiation and chemotherapy to prepare her body to receive my bone marrow. How can I think to complain when the discomfort I feel now pales in comparison.

That's it so far. I'm betting that Dianna will have me do a couple more of these posts over the next few days. After all, our lives are pretty boring and having something like this going on makes for some good blogging.