Bone Marrow: "Be The Match Marrow-thon"

Bone marrow -- the liquidy inner part of your bones that makes blood cells, red and white.

Bone marrow is threatened most commonly in leukemia, which is cancer of the blood...or more specifically, of the bone marrow. It is also killed by radiation, which is the cure for some more radical and rare diseases...like you see on house.

Without properly functioning bone marrow your body cannot protect itself against even the common cold, in addition to making you anemic (and therefore pale, cold, tired, and shakey) and possibly causing severe bone pain.

The National Bone Marrow Registry is a database that holds the contact and health information of all Americans willing to donate their healthy bone marrow to individuals who need it (usually children with leukemia).

Bone marrow is much harder to match than blood because while blood only has to match on 2 levels (ABO antigens and Rh factor), bone marrow has 6 different HLAs. The closer the match, the better the chance that the patients body will not realize that the transplanted marrow is foreign and kill it.

Bone marrow harvesting has come a long way. There are two ways to harvest it from the donor.
1. The donor takes a drug called Filgrastim for several weeks. The drug increases the bone marrow stem cells available in the bloodstream. Then the donor visits a center: A needle goes in each arm. One needle takes your blood away, filters it through a machine, takes out extra stem cells, and the blood is returned (with less stem cells) in the other arm.
Side effects include bodyaches and headache while on Filgrastim.
2. The donor is put under general anesthesia and a hollow needle is used to remove some bone marrow from the pelvis. The marrow is replaced by your body in a few weeks, and your body doesn't even miss it.
Side effects include lower back soreness for up to a week after the surgery.

Not everyone in the registry will be contacted to donate. If you are contacted you will be provided with information on the procedure the patient needs done and you can still refuse to donate at any time. (Some short-term conditions, like pregnancy, will prevent you from donating until the condition is cleared.) If you consent to donating, you will be compared to the other top 20 or so matches and the best one is picked as the donor.

Usually it takes about $50-100 to join the registry because typing the bone marrow (done by collecting a small sample of blood at your doctor's office) is expensive. However, as previously mentioned, it is free for the weeks of June 8-22, or until they meet their goal of 46,000 new volunteers.

I'll be registering ASAP to check off yet another thing on my life's goals list (and who knows, maybe two of them! ["save a life" is number 61])

The website is here: http://www.marrow.org/index.html