This is a screen shot of the email I got yesterday. It made my heart sink.
In 2005 my mom decided her New Years resolution was going to be to sign up to be a bone marrow donor. My mom, dad, sister and I all went to an event and got registered.
Not thinking much of if until recently - I knew I was in the registry but I also knew the chances of me ever being a match were a lot smaller than not being a match. They said that other ethnicities were in need of people to build up their candidate pool and that they already had a lot of Caucasians of European decent.
Well that brings us up to yesterday. After I read the email I called my mom to share the news that I was a possible match - for a 5 year old little girl. I didn't know how being pregnant would effect this all so I pulled up the website to try to find some answers before making the call to "be the match". That's when I came across another idea...
Cord blood.
Chris and I had discussed this before and didn't really have an interest to save Bennett's cord blood - but now - thinking of it as a life saving option I thought it may be worth looking into. More on that to come.
So this afternoon I called about my possible match status. The woman who was helping me was very informative. I ended up getting all my informtion updated (since I registered in 2005 they still had me as a Wheeland with a Tucson address). Then before wasting too much of her time I brought up the fact that I am currently pregnant, and asked how long the process takes and if I could be considered a match for this little girl in a few months. Basically because of the procedure and what you have to do to prep for it, you can't be pregnant or breast feeding so she put my status on hold for matches until next year.
That's when I mentioned Katie - my identical twin with the exact DNA as me who was not currently pregnant. I asked Katie last night to see if she got the same email about being a match and she didn't.
So I had the woman helping me look up to see if Katie was a match too and may have not been notified yet. Nope. Which is weird since she said most of the time when one twin is a match they both are.
Anyways - back to cord blood. I looked this information up and you are able to donate your baby's cord blood to help others. Then - as I was talking this all out with my mom - I started thinking maybe this would be a good idea. Maybe we could be a resource as being one of the youngest of the cousins to have babies.
Maybe this could have been something we could have helped Keith with in his treatment. I guess it just started the idea in my head that no one plans on getting sick. But if we saved the cord blood, mabe it could help one of my parents, Chris's parents, our siblings, siblings kids, other family members, (still needing to look into if non blood related family members can benefit from this)...
The financial commitment is a lot...
As much as $2000 for the first year and averaging $150 for each year after.
But can you put a price on your health? I need to do some more research but either way - it will be going to good use by donation or blood bank.
My heart has been heavy thinking about all if this. I pray the little girl that I was a possible match for finds her needed marrow. I only hope that if we were ever in that situation that a stranger would come to our rescue and endure the pain of the retrieval to save a life.
Saying extra prayers tonight.
