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Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Register: Deep Tissue Matching Bloods Taken.

Posted on April 10, 2007
Filed Under Personal Posts |

Previously on Ewan’s Blog…

Just taken a call on my UK mobile here in Austin…It was from the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust, who run the most successful Bone Marrow Register in the UK… The call to my mobile today was to let me know that this sample has been flagged up as a ‘coarse match’ for someone who needs bone marrow to help in their fight against leukemia.

So the package of blood vials arrived last week, and following the instructions, I took them along to the local GP to have three vials of blood taken to go away and do a ‘deep match’ of my tissue type. And hilaroity ensued, because in the GP Surgeries in Lothian, they don’t use the Vacutainer system, they just use a bundle of syrynges. So the Practice Nurse was unfortunatly trying to work through the bits and pieces suppleid to work out just how to use them.

I bit my tounge for a bit, but after she called in some help, I carefully pointed out that I had done some student nursing in my time (18 months, fact fans, until I fell down some stairs and hurt my back) and was familiar with the system. After a little bit of MacGyvering all round, we’re all set to hit the vein (on the first attempt) and start pushing the vials onto the needle output to fill the containers (they contain a lower air pressure, and slowly suck the blood through the needle). All painless, nothing more than a little scratching sensation as it goes in.

Package up the vials in the supplied container, drop into the Surgery’s mail bag, and await results. The process takes around 6-8 weeks, and the rough percentage of me being a match is on the order of 25%. I’m not thinking to far ahead on this, not because I don’t want to make the decision about if I’ll be a donor or not - given the chance, would you give a few weeks of discomfort to give a stranger a chance to live a little bit longer? I will - but more because of everything that I would put around it. So let’s wait and see.

And thanks to everyone who’s asked over meail and IM about what’s up with this. Here you go.

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