Bone marrow donation

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I have been in the bone marrow database as a donor for several years and was recently contacted as someone's 'match'; going through all of the pre-donation screening and physical now.

For FAA reporting, one kind of harvesting seems to be a simple surgery (easy to report), but the other harvesting option (the more likely one at this point) involves injections twice a day for 5 days and then a sort of elaborate blood donation. Any idea how the FAA will take this? Is there anything I should do to shorten the length of time I'm grounded?

Thanks!
 
Can't answer your question, but:

THANK YOU ! You'll make an incredible difference in someones life.
 
It takes several years to ***give*** bone marrow??? Wow, I thought it was the other way around. Seriously though, you are awesome!!!
 
i've been on the donor registry for a long time, since college. i was called once to get some blood drawn but never heard back. matching marrow is a lot more complicated than matching blood type.
 
ebykowsky said:
It takes several years to ***give*** bone marrow??? Wow, I thought it was the other way around. Seriously though, you are awesome!!!
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The odds of a unrelated donor being a match for someone are rather low. So if you submit a sample, you may be in the database for many years without a match coming up. You are not doing anything during that time, you just give the registry updates of your address if you move.

If they have a patient who is a good match for your bone marrow, they contact you to see whether you are still willing to go forward with this.

As mentioned, the donation can be done two ways, mostly depending on the recipients needs. One way is by accessing the marrow space with a needle in several locations and to just suck out some marrow. This can be done under moderate sedation or general anesthesia. As you end up with a couple of holes in your marrow bearing pelvic bones, it is kind of uncomfortable for a couple of days afterwards which can be controlled with meds. The other way to obtain marrow is to use a hormone to stimulate the bone marrow and to push it to pour out immature cells into the bloodstream. The patient gets hooked up to a machine that extracts white blood cells from the bloodstream (looks a bit like a dialysis machine). Those white cells contain some 'stem cells' which is what you need to transplant into the recipient ('seeds' to create a crop of new blood cells in the recipient whose bone marrow was wiped out with chemo and radiation). Now, you dont have anesthesia, but one of the side effects of the hormone (neulasta) is bone pain.

So, either way, while bone marrow donation is very safe for the donor, it is associated with some unpleasantness. That is why it is so remarkable that many people are willing to do this for another human being. There ought to be a medal for this.
 
I donated Marrow several years ago after I got my PPL for an 8 year old girl with Leukemia. I was on the registry for probably 13 years and got the call. First I'll tell you it was one of the most gratifying things I've ever done.

There are two was to donate marrow. The first is the way I did it an that was surgically, put you under intubate you, drill into your iliac crest and suck out the marrow etc. The second is the newer way which is basically like a plasma feresis (sp) type of procedure. They shoot you up with nuprigen (sp) I think its nuprigen or something that makes you produce young marrow cels and basically pull the cells out with a fersis type procedure.

I have to admit I was down for longer than the two days Bruce describes. My biggest problem more than a sore arse was that my butt was really dragging for a couple of weeks. Got very tired around early afternoon but that gradually dissipated. I hear the newer method with the nuprigen makes you feel like you have the flu for a few days but the recover is much quicker.

I reported it on my next medical and it was no issue at all.

If I had to ground myself for a month it would have been worth it. IIRC Tony registered as a donor as a result of talking on chat about my donation.

Good on you for doing this and if you have any questions feel free to PM me.
 
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And another huge THANK YOU! for doing this. A good friend of mine had her life saved by a bone marrow donor, now close to 10 years ago.
 
Hello I know this is an old thread but a I was going for my ppl and needed a bone morrow transplant due to my cancer coming back and it saved my life just want to say thanks to all that give blood and morrow you truly are saving lives what most are not aware of is the while and after chemo you need blood sometimes often for months so even giving blood is a big deal so thank you for saving lives.
 
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