The next step in bone marrow donation. Contacted my coordinator today.

This morning I was determined to get the ball rolling with the gift of life registry coordinator. So I called her immediately after getting my consults in. Notes can always wait a little. As a bonus, we weren't getting any lectures from the fellow to clog up the 11:00 hour.

My coordinator was kind, and told me the conversation would take about 15 minutes. Slightly different from the 2 minute phone calls I'm used to making now.

Hi I'm so and so on so and so service. I have a consult. Patient's name is Bluh. MRN is ####. Room number is ###. They have a PMHx of bleh and were admitted for blah. Our question is THIS. Ok, thank you. Good bye. 

NEXT.

Fortunately, the bone marrow donation process isn't so rushed. My missing a call back wasn't the end of the world. For the next step of the process, I'd have to fill out a form that helps people decide if I'd be an alright donor. It's the same one you fill out when you join the registry, but obviously needed to be updated since it'd been two years.

Now that I've filled it out, I just have to sit on my bum for a bit and they'll tell me within in the next week or so when they want me to come into a lab for a blood draw. They set up the testing, pay for it, etc. At the same time, hopefully this guy has more than one match on the list. Those people are getting confirmatory testing too.

It'll take 4-6 weeks to process the more in depth HLA typing. Once all of these come back, the hematologist compares donor to donor to see who is best for their patient. If I'm the best match, they'll contact me. If someone else is, they'll let me know too.

At that point, it's a waiting game to see when the hematologist thinks it's best for their patient to receive marrow. Obviously they wouldn't completely obliterate a patient's bone marrow without someone lined up, but an induction process takes time and that can be variable. Patient's need to get a bone marrow biopsy after each attempt to see if their cell count is low enough to replace with a donor's marrow or stem cells. And if that bone marrow isn't running on empty, then the patient has to go through another round.

That's simplified. The point being, a donor needs to wait until they're called, and they might not know when. But they get updates every month so they can plan a little in advance.

But being me, I have to data mine a little more. I mean, really, what's my chance I'll be going through with this?

Monday, July 21, 2014 11:01 PM

• Registered Donors 235,697
• Matches 11,195
• Transplants Facilitated 2,701
• Patient Searches 67,442
• Donor Recruitment Drives 5,811
• Collection Facilities 8
• Countries Serviced 43

So by signing up, there was a little less than 5% I'd be identified as a potential match. Now that I'm a potential match, there's a 24% chance of a transplant going through. Overall, 1% of donors go from start to finish and 4% of patient searches result in a transplant.

My coordinator gave me a ball park number to be chosen of 30%. So who knows, maybe the current numbers are better than the averages overall. Or maybe it's just close enough, because really, it doesn't change anything other than satisfying my curiosity.