The Scoop on Marrow Donation

Right now I'm a potential bone marrow donor for someone. I signed up on the registry a couple years ago and recently got a letter stating I was a potential match for someone. Matches are extremely hard to find, and I'm not going to go into a joke about "well turn the light on!" because thats usually what I would do. I am the guy that constantly interrupts people to interject stupid puns and one-liners. My life is Mystery Science Theatre 3000. My problem is genetic, and I'll leave it at that. Anyways, so I went to get some blood testing done today to make sure that I'm the match. (Hey...maybe I oughtta ask them since they're so good at matching other people to blood and tissue types, maybe they could find ME a match :)!!!. Its not happening, but if I can remember, I WILL ask the next doctor I talk to.) So blood, yeah. They took 5 little vials of blood to send to some people in a lab somewhere via Fed Ex. This is all I know so far. If I find out in 90 days that I am the match, I will then go through with the remainder of the donation process. This is done a couple different ways, but I haven't read all the literature just yet, so bear with me. One of the processes involves putting me to sleep and taking marrow out of my pelvic bones. Thats the painful method and donors usually have a really rough time walking for a couple days. They take the marrow out using big hollow needles or something. The other way is a wee bit like Hansel and Gretel and a wee bit like dialysis. I'll explain. From what I read and what I came up with, they inject you for about 5 or 6 straight day with some whacked-out medical stuff that causes your bone marrow (aka marrow stem cells) to freak out and start making a ton of themselves. I'm guessing a little leftover Bit-O-Honey from Halloween in 1993 could do the trick, but who knows. Once I'm fattened up with the juice - a fully functional marrow machine - they hitch me up to a deal that takes the marrow out of my blood. I don't know if they've got like a spaghetti strainer in there, or if there are a bunch of marrow-gnomes scooping out the little cells as they float by, but its none of my business. They pump the blood back into my other arm and it takes like 4 hours to do. Which method they do probably has something to do with the patient, the donor, the doctors, and the relative ambient level of professional medical sadism.

If you could pray for the patient, I'd appreciate it, and I imagine so would she. She's a 57 year-old woman, and I know nothing more about her. I just know that if she's to the point where she needs a marrow donor, the situation is not good, and I'm hoping that maybe I work out for this woman so she might get another shot at life. At this stage, they tell me I'm about 1-in-5 of being the right person statistically. Potential marrow donors are very few and far between, and matches are impossible to find for many people. We'll know in 90 days.