Not surprisingly, there are a lot of steps involved in joining the National Bone Marrow Registry, but I took the first one this afternoon. After reading my blog, the one and only Michael Ratty (follow him on Twitter @heyratty), who is already a member of the Registry, sent me an email with a promotional code so I signed up as well. I had to fill out basic health and wellness questions, as well as a brief medical history. Needless to say I passed the first round of questions, and they are shipping me my registration kit. I'll need to take mouth swabs and send them back to be tested and then I'll be added to the Registry database!
Now I had always thought that your bone marrow was somehow linked to your blood type. I am B negative, which is actually the second rarest blood type, so I was concerned that I'd be in high demand. FYI, AB negative is the rarest with less than 1% of people having it, and O negative and B negative are tied for second, with just under 5% each. Anyways, it turns out that blood type isn't necessarily linked to bone marrow. It has more to do with the proteins in your blood cells; the proteins are how your body is able to tell which cells belong and which cells don't. Recipients obviously want bone marrow that closely resembles their own cells, this way the body won't try and kill the new, healthy bone marrow. Seriously, how do scientists know this stuff?!
If you want to learn more about joining the Bone Marrow Donor Registry, here is a link to their site: http://www.marrow.org/index.html
If you do decide to join, you'll eventually see a web-page like this one:
Good for you Amy, being a bone barrow donor freaks me out!
ReplyDeleteRandom FYI that I KNOW you are dying to knwo about me and Yuri, we have the same blood type being 0 Negative (crazy huh, we are def. rare haha!)