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Donating bone marrow
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Has anyone donated bone marrow?
I donate blood and they always have leaflets around about bone marrow, I think I might do it but I'm unsure..and does it hurt??
I donate blood and they always have leaflets around about bone marrow, I think I might do it but I'm unsure..and does it hurt??
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Im fairly sure its an "uncomfortable" procedure but there are so few donors, its really worth doing if youre interested. Mr CC is definitely going to do it at some point soon.
http://www.blood.co.uk/pages/marrow_info.html
So they dont drill you? Oh then I want to sign up aswell
Can't put a price on life and all that.
They took a blood sample and I didn't hear from them for about 3 years, until after I'd graduated. I got a packet through the post with the "biohazard" logo on the front and it scared the crap out of me. Turned out someone with lukemia seemed to match my blood sample so they had sent me two plastic vials to fill up with blood and return, so they could confirm the match. Apparently with my bone marrow they would have a 40-60% chance of living.
I got my GP to send in the blood sample, but it turned out it didn't match after all. Don't know whether the person died or not though.
After that I did some research into it and apparently a significant proportion of donations result in incapacitation for several weeks and severe pain, or infections/MRSA. However, now you can instead just donate marrow stem cells (something like that) which means no operation, just a very long hypodermic needle being pushed into your hip and the cells extracted. This doesn't give the recipient as much chance of surviving though.
I thought about taking myself off the register, but didn't. I sort of consider it a contribution to make up for the bad stuff I do in life, and my general good luck compared to others. Basically, if there was another match I might go through agony or even die after the operation, but the chances are slim - and if I had lukemia I'd want somebody else to do the same for me.