I became a bone marrow donor after a medical team diagnosed my dad with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. In his case, he was in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. Getting tested was a no-brainer, but the preparation for the actual procedure was way more intense than I anticipated.
To start, I had to send in roughly 4 tubes of my blood to a lab at the transplant unit at the hospital two separate times. After the lab received the blood test results, the results showed that I was a half-match. This meant that I shared roughly half of my father's DNA. The best bet for bone marrow matches are siblings of the recipient who share the same parents, and the recipient's biological children. I'm my father's only biological child, and his siblings have different mothers, so I knew I would be the closest match.
After the results confirmed that I was a half match, I had to go to the hospital and receive additional testing. A nurse escorted me into a sterile room and watched as a nurse prepared four swabs and labeled 13 tubes that would soon contain my cheek cells and blood. After the tubes were full and my cheeks were sore from scrubbing with a swab, a physician came in to discuss the bone marrow donation procedure and assess the risks.
I was told that I would be getting four doses of bone marrow boosting injections called Neupogen. Neupogen is a medication that encourages the body to rapidly produce white blood cells. For someone like my dad who had cancer, it wouldn't produce many side effects as the healthy white blood cells would replace his unhealthy ones. Since I was a healthy donor, I received Neupogen injections to overproduce white blood cells to the point that they would spill out from my bone marrow and into my bloodstream. Looking back, I should have realized how painful that sounded, but I was honestly so focused on my dad's healing that I suppressed that thought.
On day one of receiving Neupogen, I actually fainted immediately after the injection. I think it was because I was so overwhelmed about the donation process, rather than any physical pain. I felt like the weight of someone else's life was on my shoulders because it was, and that was incredibly stressful.
After receiving the cell boosting Neupogen injections for four days in a row, every single bone in my body was throbbing. Major bones like my pelvis, spine, ribs
On the day of the donation, I was told to lay in a bed for a few hours (typically 4-5) while a machine collected blood from a vein in one arm and then returned the blood through a vein in my other arm. This meant I had two active needles in my inner arms for a few hours, which meant I couldn't move, eat, or use the bathroom. As my nurse connected me to the machine I was very excited. I knew that once my blood was processed and returned, I would no longer be in pain. More importantly, my dad would be one step closer to health.
Once the collection started, my nurse told me that the pace of the machine would have to slow down to account for the size of my body. If the machine processed my blood too quickly, it wouldn’t be good form veins. This meant that a typical four-to-five hour procedure agonizingly stretched into seven hours.
As an enormous and obnoxiously loud machine collected the cells from my body, I felt entirely numb. Aside from the occasional pressure from the tightening and releasing of the blood pressure cuff on my ankle, I felt pins and needles throughout my body. My nineteen-year-old body was doing everything it could to produce enough cells to sustain a grown man. Regardless of my pain, all I could think about were the memories I’d spent with my dad throughout my life.
I remember fading in and out of sleep during the procedure, but the toughest part was having to stay still for so long. After a while, the needles' insertion sites began to burn and my hands and body began to tingle like crazy. My nurse gave me
At the seven-hour mark, I looked over at the bag of cells that I expected to be fullto the brim and saw that it was barely
After the collection, I went to the hospital room that my dad was staying in, and I fell into the deepest sleep of my life. When I woke up, there was a swarm of nurses in the room preparing my cells to give them to my dad in a way similar to an IV drip.
It's been over fifty days post-transplant and my dad, and I have never been closer. Though the experience was easily the hardest thing my body has ever gone through, I'm so glad I did it. Seven hours of pain in exchange for years of memories waiting to be made was the easiest decision of my life. I would easily do it again if I had to. If you're interested in becoming a lifesaving match for someone, you can register yourself at https://bethematch.org/.
