Thursday 5 September 2013

No Good Deed....

Today I became Bone Marrow donor.
This post is not me asking for a pat on the back, I just wanted to explain why I did it and why it wasn't something I really thought about, just something I knew I wanted to do.
For the past couple of weeks this link has been popping up all over my news feed. http://www.essexcountystandard.co.uk/news/10631323.Can_you_help_Rob_/
Rob George is a 21 year old who has leukemia, he is the son of my old dance teacher and has been battling this disease since 2011. Now leukemia, as you may know is a cancer of the blood and Rob needs a bone marrow transplant to survive,his family have all been tested and none came up as a match, similarly no one that is currently on the Anthony Nolan register, a world wide bone marrow transplant list, are matches for Rob either. Having read the full story it struck me that if this happened to me or you, if you found out one of your family members or one of your close friends say, needed a bone marrow transplant to survive, that little piece of hope that they would be fine. All they needed was a bone marrow match, out of all the people who were bone marrow donors all they needed to find was one person, just one match and there wasn't one, what would you do? What would you expect to happen? To have that hope cut down, destroyed because no one was brave enough to have a few injections and spend a day in hospital to save someone's life.
My Nan died of cancer when I was 11, unfortunately there was nothing anyone could have done to save her, but if there was, I know I would have been even more distraught thinking it could have been done but wasn't because there weren't enough people on a register. Or because someone hadn't ticked a box on an application form.
So this is me saying I've registered. Whether it be blood, bone marrow or organ donation, I hope this will make you think about helping someone when they need it most!
Peace out!
XX