First read this (excerpted from here):
…Somewhere out there in America, a person who we will never meet gave part of their own body to save this little girl. Asking nothing in return, a person signed up for the bone marrow registry, waited to be called for maybe months, maybe years, and agreed that if the call came, he or she would be ready to offer something unique and precious that gives my niece a chance to make it to her seventh birthday, and if all goes well, maybe her seventeenth. Maybe even her seventieth. That’s the kind of hope that bone marrow donations provide: tomorrow we start counting toward her future, waiting anxiously as her new cells migrate through her blood and into her bone, where they may settle and start making her new cells – cells that don’t carry the fatal genetic twist that her own marrow suffers from.
So on day zero, I would like to ask you this: if you are healthy and capable of giving this kind of gift of yourself, please – please – sign up for the bone marrow donor registry. My niece has a rare tissue type and none of the extended family members matched; the registry was the only way to find a stranger out there who happened to share her particular combination of genes. Because of the registry, the count-down to day zero has ended, and the count upwards toward her new life has begun. …
Then think about signing up for the National Marrow Donor Program here.
