A special message from our friend, Dante Shepherd:
Bone marrow donors are always needed in response to blood diseases like leukemia. Unfortunately, it’s not a simple case of matching blood types, but needing to find a much more exact match between donor and recipient - which is an even larger problem when the number of people on donor registration lists never encompasses enough people to have matches for everyone. The other problem is that it’s not cheap to register donors, either - conducting the analysis so you can properly be added to the lists can cost as much as $100 - so there aren’t always many registration drives that you can take part in.
My Eagle project, back when I was a Boy Scout, was to organize a bone marrow donor registration drive, partly inspired by a Scout in our troop who had died unable to find a match. I’ve been trying to figure out how to use STW to organize a new drive for a while now - a little hard when you can’t all just come down to a local building we’re having it at! - a nice idea but certainly with difficulties before we even get to the costs.
BUT - and this is good news - the National Marrow Donor Program is actually having all costs covered until the end of January. Even better, you can sign up online - it takes less than ten minutes to fill out the forms, you’ll be mailed a cheek-swabbing kit which you mail back - and bam, you’re done and registered, and it was free. So please, if you can, register to be a donor before the month is over. You may never end up being a match for someone - but every person who gets registered helps cut down on the possibility that someone won’t be able to find a match.
If you’re between 18 and 60, please consider becoming registered as a potential donor. It’s a great opportunity to do something easy, and you might end up saving a life someday. Thanks.
I’d love to, except my being gay apparently also means my marrow isn’t good enough. When will we abandon these archaic policies grounded in late 80s fearmongering?
