Last fall Bean4 decided to "get swabbed" and register for the Bone Marrow Registry. About two weeks later she was called up - "You're a match!" Thus began a two month journey toward donating :) You can't imagine how proud I am of her! Her recipient is a 40-year-old woman.
So after all of the medical tests and getting all the paperwork where it needed to be at the right time - all from overseas in Italy - it was time to fly to the states and start the donation process.
Bean4 needed a companion so the bone marrow donor association flew me out to meet her the Wednesday prior to her Monday donation. We flew into Dulles International and were driven to Georgetown University Hotel which is literally in the same parking lot as the hospital not 30 yards away. That was good because it was cold!!
Thursday morning we were met in the hotel lobby and taken over to the hospital. Here she had vitals and stuff run again before her first injection was given. Oooops there's a problem - "You're here but your medicine is not."
"WHAT???"
"Okay, we are getting it all taken care of, no worries."
So she finally gets her first injections. Two shots in the back of both arms.
And then we're off until the next morning for the next set of injections. Each morning she had to start off by going across to the hospital to get those two injections. She and I did some shopping (I finally found a wool coat I liked!) and met my godbrother and his son for supper - actually he picked us up :) They had just dropped off his lovely wife at the airport for her duties with the U S Air Force.
The next day the rest of the family still living at home drove out to meet us and spend the weekend in D.C. as a mini family vacation while visiting with Bean4. That night they picked me up and dropped off Bean5 to stay the weekend with her at the hotel while the rest of us stayed with my godbrother's family.
The next day we started touring D.C. for the family had never been there before. The only thing I'm sad they missed was Arlington National Cemetery. I got to show Bean4 the day they left but unbeknownst to me it closes really early in the winter - in fact I didn't really know it closed at all. At Arlington we visited two graves - one of a man whom Bean4 knew and the grandfather of my friend, Rose. It was so cold that day that my breath froze on my coat collar and neck scarf.
Anyway, Monday morning rolls around and MrBeans takes me back to the hotel while picking up Bean5. Bean4 and I are met in the lobby along with 4 other folks... 2 donors, 2 companions. The 2 other donors are guys. The process was much like dialysis where blood comes out of one arm, goes through a machine to have the stem cells removed, and the blood goes back in the other arm. Because Bean4's body took so well to the meds, her time on the machine was drastically reduced. During this time the donors had to lie still and could not move one of their arms. We companions were ushered in and out of the room as one or the other had a procedure done so we wound up out of the room as much as in it :) This is also where we got to learn about each of the donors. I would like to highlight one of the donors - well actually his fraternity.
This particular donor was from Atlanta. He is in a fraternity and one of the brothers was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. So every single one of the brothers registered with the registry. He was the third one to be called as a match to someone!
Anyway, Bean4 was pretty much up and running afterwards :) We did go take a little nap after lunch but I think that had more to do with staying up half the weekend with her sister than the donation itself.
She got an update on her recipient a month later. It stated that considering her recipient's disease and age that she was doing as well as is expected. That's about as good of news as you can get at this stage. There will be at least one more update later on. I'll post it when we get it.
Pictures from around D.C. coming up in another post.
