In keeping with my promise to donate bone marrow if Veronica’s Haunt was funded, the buccal swab test kit has officially arrived.
For those not familiar with the process, the kit is a set of 4 cotton swabs that you use to collect buccal cells from the inner cheeks of your mouth. You collect cells at the top-left, top-right, bottom-left, and bottom-right of your mouth then send it back in using the postage-paid return envelope and accompanying biohazard sticker. This is then used to perform the ULA test, which is what determines whether or not a potential donor’s marrow is a match.
There was a very nice booklet that comes with the kit explaining the entire process, including some background on the two major processes to extract marrow from a donor. Which process you happen to go through is completely independent on what the recipient’s doctor believes is best for that particular situation. In other words, you don’t get a choice and should be prepared to do either one.
The one most people have heard about through rumor or horror stories isn’t exactly what they think. This one is simply called marrow donation. It involves putting you completely under anesthesia and extracting the marrow from the back of the pelvic bone. This procedure is considered invasive surgery, but not quite on the level of, say, removing an appendix. Yes, cuts are made in the body to get to the pelvic bone and extraction is performed. Believe it or not, this procedure is outpatient and you recover within 1-5 days.
The other method of marrow collection (and more common) is called Peripheral Blood Stem Cell (PBSC) donation. This one takes a little more time but does not involve surgery. Basically you are put on special drugs five days prior to your appointment. These drugs will kick your body’s production of blood-forming cells.
On the fifth day you’re hooked up to a machine that extracts your blood out one arm, filters out the stem cells and pumps it back into your other arm, similar to kidney dialysis. This also is not without some side effects, such as headaches, muscle and bone pains, but they generally subside about a day after the PBSC is taken out.
According to the literature, the test will take approximately 5-6 weeks to complete, at which time I will be entered into the National Marrow system. Then the waiting begins. Some people can wait years and never get the call, others can get called up immediately. No matter what, this promise will be kept. It is a logical tradeoff to go through a little bit of pain (by comparison) in order to give someone else a chance to live.
