Potential Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust Bone Marrow Match
For Barry.
Just taken a call on my UK mobile here in Austin, and it’s managed to give me a little emotional nudge. It was from the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust, who run the most successful Bone Marrow Register in the UK. More than five years ago, at one of the annual Rag Conferences (Student Charities Group) I, and a lot of my friends, were placed on the aforesaid register at the bifg friendly stick insistence of Barry Clemens, the Student Co-Ordinator for Anthony Nolan – not that I needed much convincing. The call to my mobile today was to let me know that this sample has been flagged up as a ‘coarse match’ for someone who needs bone marrow to help in their fight against leukemia.
When I get back to Edinburgh, there’ll be a package for me to get the local surgery to take a full blood sample to do a ‘fine’ match on myself to someone requiring bone marrow. That’s going to be my number one priority on the Monday morning.
For those of you who know me, you’ll realise that this means a heck of a lot, and while I know that not every partial match turns into a full match (Suw twitters that this was the case when she was partially flagged), I’m sitting here, wishing I could tell Barry that yet again, he’s still making a difference.
Now could everyone in the UK go and get themselves on the Anthony Nolan Register as well?
Good for you! For the US readers, there’s the National Marrow Donor Program at http://www.marrow.org.
Siblings have only a 25% chance of being an exact match, so finding an exact match from someone unknown to a patient can seem like a miracle. A matched unrelated donor transplant can be the last hope for survival.
Because what’s being matched is a set of genes, genetic background is key, and the marrow donor registries encourage the participation of *all* ethnic groups in the search for matching donors.
Speaking as someone who is unable to participate because some of my white blood cells once ‘joined the other side’… thanks.
I can just hear Barry’s happy laugh… good to know his legacy lives on. I miss him. Just to clarify Ewan’s post, Barry was killed in a collision with a snow plough just before Christmas 2003.