Kid's friend has leukemia, want bone marrow donors

self

[fourdeuce82d]

Old high school friend has an 18 year old son with leukemia. His outlook is really good- the chemo is working, and they haven't found any cancer cells for several months. He's probably NOT going to need a bone marrow transplant

The thing is, the curent treatment involves repeated, growing doses of chemo- kind of a "scorched earth" approach to making sure no cancer is left.

He's a jock, he's a scrapper, but it's tough- they basically ramp up the doses until the chemo's about to kill you.

I'd like to be able to tell him that his situation has motivated a couple of hundred people to sign to be bone marrow donors, so that someone who is in even worse shape than he is has a better chance to live.

Knowing the tough times we're going through are going to benefit somebody else makes it easier to take.

Plese consider signing up, and please pass this around where you think it will help.

Here's a URL for the National Marrow Donor Program:

http://www.marrow.org/

To sign up, all you have to do is find a blood center, and have a vial of blood taken for analysis- if you match someone, they'll call you.

If you do sign up, or get someone else to, please let me know, so I can keep a running count.

[tallhappy]

Tzu-Chih Foundation ('Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-Chi Foundation, U.S.A.') has an excellent bone marrow program.

[jigsaw]

I signed up many years ago when a friend needed a marrow transplant. I haven't been matched yet but hope that someday I will be.

I also hope other FReepers who haven't signed up will seriously consider doing so.

Prayers for the young man's full recovery.

[sharktrager]

I encourage you to do one other thing, which is to push for lifting the limitations on registering anglo donors.

It took me forever to get on the registry because the registrations drives only accepted minorities.

The only reason I finally did get on is one of the drive managers admitted they never filled their alloted slots anyway, so adding me wouldn't e a real problem.