A kind consideration: Sign up for your country's bone marrow registry
As the new year is setting in, I wanted to give a shout out and advocate to this great cause that has the potential to drastically change someone's life. Be The Match is a US-based organization that supports signing up people for the national bone marrow registry where if you are a match, you could help someone overcome a variety of ailments such as leukemias, lymphomas, aplastic anemia, immune deficiency disorders, and some solid tumor cancers.
Signing up is very easy. You will use the previous link to sign up, they mail you a swab which you will use to swab your mouth, and you mail it back. The information is added to the registry and if you are a match, will receive some communication letting you know of the need. They compensate you for travel and expenses so if you have to miss work, you will still receive money for any lost wages. I know the actual procedure can sound frightening but I can guarantee if you are called upon to donate, that it will be one of the rarest opportunities we get in life to truly assist someone in need. I have personally not gone through the full donation process but was under consideration a couple of years ago as a potential donor. If you don't meet the qualifications to donate, please consider sharing the sign up link with someone who you think may be willing.
I'm not aware of similar organizations in other countries but if you have the knowledge for a specific country, please post in the comments below.
For what it’s worth, I signed up over a decade ago and every few years they send me a message asking me to reaffirm that I’m still interested. That’s the only communication I’ve gotten from them. They don’t spam you with requests to donate or anything like that.
I also have yet to be asked to donate, since my understanding is that you have to be a very close match for the procedure to be successful. I’d do it in a heartbeat though, even if it was for a stranger I’d never meet.
I take psych meds which prevent me from donating blood. Could that similarly prevent me from donating bone marrow? :/
Medical Guidelines - Who can join
Looks like I'll have to ask a health professional. Thanks.
FWIW, I think the way this works is that you submit a swab sample and then they have you on file. Once they have identified you as a potential match, they'll contact you again and then they'll gather a lot more info. Apparently it's easier to collect a lot of samples and then sort out the details of any potential donor once they're confirmed to be at least somewhat interesting to a recipient; that's just the way the math works out if you need to screen millions to find a match.
At least that's what I'm inferring from the fact that a family member of mine was contacted after a few years about a potential match, and couldn't he get them... I think it was a blood sample? In any case, nothing ever came of it, and I doubt they would give false hope about a donor to some poor patient without confirming first that they do in fact have a donor.
So, assuming it works the way I think it does, maybe you can just sign up and worry about eligibility later.
In general, bone marrow donations are a lot harder to find and a lot more critical, so I'd think the overzealous protections around blood donations are a bit relaxed.