My experience donating stem cells

> Donating stem cells was a moving experience. A teacher I had in high school used to say that everyone has an abundance of something in life, be it money, connections, friends, confidence, or something else, and that everyone should use their abundance to help others. Donating stem cells felt like a way to express gratitude for my own health by giving it to another person.

A beautiful sentiment. The world would be a better place were everyone to think this way.

I recently registered for Blood Stem Cell Donation in Australia (already a regular plasma donor).

Something I found particularly funny about the process was that the registry here (https://strengthtogive.org.au/register/) offers you the opportunity to get a cheek-swab registration kit mailed to you

…only to tell you on the next page that they have huge demand for the kits but the state/federal government haven’t approved their use :(

Great read, congratulations on giving someone another chance at life. Donating stem cells is one of the most unambiguously selfless things a person can do.

About 2 years ago my dad was diagnosed with ALS, a particularly aggressive form of Leukemia. About 30-40% of patients die within a year (at least based on the research my dad did) if they don't get a stem cell transplant. Thankfully my Dad had two brothers that were perfect matches. The one who ended up coming down was extremely trypanophobic, it wasn't a pleasant experience for him either, but two years later and my Dad's still kicking.

Hopefully whoever gets your cells has just as much luck. Either way they're lucky to have you!

Both my father and uncle had acute leukemia three years ago. Their brothers went in for a check, but were not a match for stem cell transplants. Luckily, for both there was a match with a random stranger who went through the effort to donate their stem cells such as what happened in this blog post.

I can absolutely recommend everyone to register as a stem cell donor. Thanks to these random matches my father lives on.

As a random fun fact: he got to write one letter to the donor, who got to write one letter back. You never get their contact details, and don't even know in which country they live. Needless to say, tears were shed over the short letter conversation back and forth.

.. my donation experience was strikingly similar and the team at Johns Hopkins were on task the entire time. The attention to seemingly unimportant details are what impressed me the most. They will be flying me back in 3 weeks to meet the team again - and the recipient - a 26 year old battling a rare blood disease [less than .02% of the world population].

I'm already stock-piling the tears.

Let’s share our local/national equivalents of Gift of Life, where you can register and potentially donate:

Awestruck reading this. This article blew my mind and can't tell how much I liked it. Thanks for donating and writing the article.

I donated stem cells to a stranger with a blood cancer in 2016 and reading this article reminded me of how thankful I am to have been able to do that.

It's funny how similar the author's initial situation was to mine - I was caught up in life, just accepted a new job, was getting married in a few months, and I get this call from an organization letting me know I was a bone marrow match for a patient. I totally forgot I registered years earlier after a blood drive in college and thought it was a scam, but eventually remembered signing up.

I'm irrationally afraid of anesthesia so when I found out that stem cell donation for adult patients is done through apheresis I was ecstatic and ready to go. There is a lot of process to go through before being confirmed as a match, a lot of doctor visits and blood work. When it was determined I was a good match for the patient, they scheduled the filgrastim injections and the donation day.

Filgrastim messed me up a bit. I had a lot of bone pain and headaches for a few days and the blood work before and after injections showed an ~8x increase in my white blood cell count (which is the goal - the stuff definitely works). My donation experience was much easier than the author's, I was on the apheresis machine for about 3.5 hours and was finished in one session.

The following year I hosted a donor registration drive at my place of work and helped 100 or so people sign up. I don't know if any of them ever matched with anybody - the chances of matching are really slim. It's super critical to register a large number of people to try to improve matching donors with patients.

Donating is probably the most significant thing I've done for another person, yet one of the simplest things for me. The doctors and organization are apologetic for all the inconvenience to me, but they're helping me save somebody's life and I get a full physical workup out of it. The pre-donation blood work and doctor visits were like the most comprehensive health check up I've ever had and it was all free.

I got a letter from my patient a few months after the donation. I cherish that experience and would do it again in a heartbeat. I never got to meet my patient, as some donors do. I hope they're still doing well.

Thank you for donating your stem cells. MY 10-year old son has had an immune disease for many years and just had a stem cell transplant, with cells from an unknown donor.

We are so grateful that someone took the time to sign up and then to donate.

Once again, thanks for sharing this story. I hope it inspires others to donate.

The reason for the repeated pregnancy tests was because those drugs are undoubtedly going to cause birth defects... cannot give anything to pregnant (or who may become pregnant) women except for legacy drugs that have been proven safe decades ago.

Great read.