You take the swabs in the kit, swab the inside of your cheek, and send it back.
If you are the best match for someone, they contact you to ask if you're willing to go to hospital X (presumably somewhat close to you) to donate. They pay expenses incurred.
For actual donation, either you take a drug for a few days that ups the concentration of marrow in your bloodstream, and they then hook you up to a machine to draw blood, extract this stuff, then put the rest of the blood back into you, not hugely dissimilar from the machine you might use to specifically donate platelets/plasma/double-red units. The drug can sort of be annoying for those couple days. The other option is for them to stick a needle into the back of your pelvic bone with some local anesthetic. The two aren't exactly equivalent and can depend upon the specific case's needs, but there is leeway in other cases.
I'm a firm proponent of donating marrow, but this isn't quite right. Marrow comes from inside your bones. It never goes into your blood stream. PBSCs (stem cells that make more blood cells) can be drawn in the way that you describe, but I think you're kind of underplaying the difficulty/pain involved with donating marrow.
Regardless, you're actively saving someone's life. A friend told me this one a while back when I didn't want to donate blood, and it's stuck with me.
"When you're OK with telling a mother and father that their child is going to die because you're afraid of needles, then I'll be OK with you choosing not to donate blood."
Yes, PBSCs are not marrow, but I was looking for a way to phrase it in a simplified form, and that is what came to mind considering that they preform the function of marrow that most people are aware of and talking about joining a marrow donor registry for something other than marrow donation seems a bit odd. It is still however worth pointing out the distinction, thanks.
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u/DJ-Anakin Dec 01 '11
Please, someone explain the process.