Wednesday, November 30, 2011

How to Save a Life


Amit Gupta is a great guy.  He also has Acute Leukemia.  He needs a bone marrow transplant to survive.  He is of South Asian descent, which means that his chances of finding a match for a donation are very, very slim.  


Find out more about Amit here.

Please help!  Join the National Bone Marrow Registry - especially if you are South Asian, but even if you are not.  It is free and easy, and you could be the one to save someone's life.  

I know... it seems like a long shot.  You are really busy.  The holidays are coming up.  And probably lots of other people are joining the match as a result of this drive for Amit, so you don't have to put it on your to-do list, right?

Here's the thing about bone marrow transplants: they can be really dangerous for the recipient.  So, because of that, the best chance of the transplant working - and curing the patient's disease - is to have the donor's unique biological markers match as closely as possible to the recipient's.  YOU have your very own, one-of-a-kind concoction of genetic products that no one else in the world has.  YOU, and only you, could have just the genes that could save somebody's life.

I joined the registry almost nine years ago... and this past April I got a call that I could be a match for a 55-year old man with multiple myeloma.  I don't know anything else about him.  I donated in August.  I don't know how that patient is doing since his transplant, or even if it worked.  I might never know.  But I do know that it was a total blessing and a great privilege to donate and to have been given even a chance to save someone's life (and maybe someone's husband's life, someone's brother's life, someone's dad's life, too.) 


No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...