Many of you all know that I'm a match to donate bone marrow. In the last three months, I've had a couple of viles of blood squeezed out, a day trip to DC, and some fun games of phone tag. DKMS http://www.dkmsamericas.org is the middle-man who matches the donor, and recipient who's in need of a transplant. If you're not in the database, it's kind of a no-brainer!
To catch you all up to speed, I entered the database around Christmas-time 2011. A friend of mine from highschool sent info from a parent whose child was in need of a bone marrow transplant, but didn't have a match in his family. The 7-year old Zach Guillot had already received a transplant from his brother, but when the cancer came back, the doctors informed that his brother was too close of a genetic match. Mrs. Guillot, Zach's mom seemed to organize a mighty force of swabbing initiatives. So much so that I recieved info and a swab kit from DKMS that six weeks after his bad prognosis.
In April, I got a call from DKMS informing that I was a match for someone else. Went to the doc-in-a-box for confirmatory blood work; but unfortunately was not able to donate due to the patient's condition.
Weeks later in April, I signed up to run a marathon with Team In Training. While my motives were not entirely pure (pride anyone!?), I felt like I was sort of in-line with my Higher power's will since I was also raising funds for blood cancer research. The first email that I sent out to potential donors, I received a surprising email from a friend who had been diagnosed with Leukemia that same day. Boom. That was the confirmation that I was on the right path.
So over the summer, my friend Laurie started her chemo, and I started training. If you're close with me, you know that this past summer was no walk in the park. Every step I took, I felt pain. My knees hurt, and I felt beat-up. I was beating myself up. Step, step, step; boom, boom, boom - not a lot of time for recovery.
Fast forward through that yuck season and I got a call a couple of days shy of my 26th birthday. I was a match again! performed a few more rounds of blood work, and the patient this time was well enough to go through with the donation.
Then I travelled to DC to have a full-phsyical. To date, this was one of my favorite parts of the process. I got a heart EKG and chest x-ray. From the latter, i remembered that I had a hollow chest - a fact which I had forgotten about since puberty. Basically, my chest is encaved, which, for males makes them look abnormal, but for me as a woman allows awesome cleavage! My heart EKG produced some interesting results as there were notes on the graph print-out: sinus bradycarid with sinus arrhythmia, possible left atrial enlargement, rightward axis, borderline ECG. Huh? I started to self-diagnose, an especially dangerous idea considering I was in the company of two other marathon-running bone-marrow matches who were just as a competitive on their PR's as they were on their resting heart-rates. 56 beats per minute will likely be my personal best on that front (yall know the end of the story by now...i finished the marathon!).
Three weeks later on 10/19/12 I ran the San Francisco marathon in Laurie Drummond's honor. Laurie ended her chemo and was in remission almost to the exact day of my run. I believe it was the last day of my training that she went had her doctor's appt. It was yet another aligning of the universe. After all my doubt and shame of the summer, running the marathon and receiving the chemo was exactly what we were supposed to do. The synchronicty of events was too real.
One week out from the marathon, and one week out from the bone marrow donation and I'm finally putting keystorke to keyboard. I meet here in the middle between San Fran and DC, in my little Nashville apt. Grateful to know that my body can handle the pain of 26 miles (even with a sore wrist...you can ask me about that later!). While my Team In Training team-mates and coaches tried to reassure me that I was running for something bigger than myself, I really think I ran that thing for me. It was pride and me proving myself something, albeit I don't know what exactly. Selfish motives may have been the theme for the marathon, but I know that next week it actually is something TOTALLY outside of myself. But if the marathon was for anything it may have been to get me ready for the donation adventure. Come next Tuesday, the docs at Georgetown are going to take all that fit-ass blood that I worked my ass off this summer and give it to an anonymous 43 year old woman whose battles are way bigger than my itty-bitty-shitty committee -- i.e. the voices in my head!
Guys, that's it. I love you all. Thanks for the support. Let me know your podcast and tv show recommendations. I'm really tired of typing about myself.
