16. Join the Bone Marrow Donor Registry.

UPDATE:  My registration kit came in the mail the other day and I needed to take mouth swabs and send them back.  There were 4 sterile q-tip things, as well as a biohazard sticker, 4 barcode stickers and package to mail them back in.  I needed to flag each q-tip with the barcode stickers and put them in the return envelope and seal it shut with the biohazard sticker.  They are going to analyze the swabs and put my bone marrow...type (?) in the registry and then we just wait!  I went ahead and took pictures of every step, so take a look!

16. Join the Bone Marrow Donor Registry.

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: