Marrow Donors and Transplants

I haven't posted on here in a long time. There are some leftover issues, of course, but leukemia/BPDCN is pretty much in the past for me now. My "new normal" is a whole lot like my old one except that I'm slower and can't run very far.

Anyway, some asked me about being a marrow donor, and this discussion of bone marrow or stem cell donation seemed pretty informative, so I'm posting it here, too, just in case you find it helpful.



How to Donate Marrow

Just go to marrow.org and sign up. They will mail you a donor package with lots of information. You swab your cheek, put it in, uh, something they sent you, and you send it back. That's enough to find out if you _might_ be a match. That's it. The likelihood they'll call you is pretty slim. If they do, then they'll want blood to check your DNA for 10-14 genetic factors. If you're an exact match, or really close, and you're the only one, they'll call you. Giving marrow is, literally, a real pain in the butt for about a week. "Feels like a mule kicked you in the backside," I was told. Nowadays, they usually take stem cells. They give you medicine for a week that makes your marrow run wild and its stem cells pour into your bloodstream. Your bones ache for a week, and then they take the stem cells out with a machine very similar to a dialysis machine, the ache goes away, and you go home.

That's the whole process, but only 1 in 500 people who sign up are called on as donors. It takes that much to find "the match." So, for the most part, your action is just to order the kit and send in the swab. Easy.

I know of someone who had 50 people come up on the list as potential donors. Only 3 turned out after blood tests to both be willing and to be a good match. One turned out to be a perfect match.

For me, they found 3 potentials in the whole world and none of them were a workable match after blood tests. My brothers were a complete mismatch, and my sister was the lowest acceptable match. Fortunately, nowadays women donate their placentas and cord (at some hospitals) and cord blood doesn't have to match near as well as adult blood. I got cord blood, which is usually not preferred, but for someone as harshly prepped as I was, the immature baby immune system that those  stem cells created in me turned out to be a blessing. It's not as strong as an adult transplant, so it kept me a little safer.

Is this TMI? This process is amazing to me. Some people really need an adult transplant because the new immune system has to go in and destroy any lurking cancer cells. They thought I was healthy enough and had a good enough attitude that they would just use a scorched earth policy on every possible hiding place they could think of. The baby immune system didn't have anything left to clean up.

Sometimes there is a battle between what is left of the patient's marrow and the donor marrow. I have a friend almost three years after transplant who still has 2% of his own old marrow. Not me. I was 100% donor the first time they checked because they did an excellent job getting my marrow to 0% even before the transplant.