This morning as we sat at breakfast two single girls, (in their 20's), sat down next to us. They started a conversation with us and it led into the normal, "What business are you here for" type of talk. Who knew it would become so deep of a 1/2 hour conversation.
One of the girls was here for her work and her friend had came with her. They are from the Washington D.C. area. Sarah said that she was here delivering bone marrow to a donor. Wow! We talked about what a rewarding job she has. She flies donor marrow all over. As Darren said, she is delivering life. A mission in her job.
Her job led into our adoption. It was just a great conversation of encouragement on both sides. We realized the importance that if everyone would go to bonemarrow.org and get the free kit to quick and easily swab our cheek and be put on the registry...many people would not die from leukemia or whatever other disease that could be cured from this one easy swab. Think if EVERYONE would swab their cheek and be on the registry there might not be a sweet little child dying today because they couldn't find a match. You might ask like we did, "What happens if I am a match?" Here's what we were told: They can ask you to go under general anesthesia and have marrow drawn from your hip...you might have a couple of weeks of discomfort afterwards (like a pulled muscle). Pretty simple it seems. Then they also can do like they do for taking blood platelets. You have to take 5 rounds of medicine to produce more marrow in your blood stream then they take it out like they would taking your blood or platelets. She said sometime you feel a bit "flu like" when taking the medicine...but, it's generally not a big deal. We are gonna get our kits.
What can we do to help others? So, many things.
They learned about the need in other countries...we learned about the need right here in our own country. I think we all walked away with some great information and things to chew on. But, more than just chew...to swallow and act.
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