Today’s kind act is basically a humble brag about how young I am! 💁🏼♀️
Today, I signed up to be on the stem cell register through Anthony Nolan which is possible if you are aged 16-30. Sam is a keen bean and signed up a while ago! This means that if we are a match with somebody with a blood cancer/disorder then we can donate stem cells (bone marrow) to save their life. Pretty amazing stuff. But right now due to COVID they are really struggling to get more people onto the register and children and adults around the world are dying before a match is found.
If you want to go onto the register, then you will be on the register until you are 61 and you must be happy with the procedures. Most people (90%) would follow a process similar to giving blood but just with some injections beforehand and a longer donation time. However 10% would need to go under general anaesthetic so you need to be happy with this as a possibility. They then send out a simple cheek swab test to see if your a match.
Your chances of being a match are fairly low (although they are higher for certain ethnicities and if you are male) but how amazing would it be if you could do this for somebody?
We wanted Etta to donate her organs but our beautiful girl had gone through so much in her short life that her organs weren’t suitable for donation. ❤️ So this is an important one for us.
If you are over 30 (👵🏼🧓🏾) then you can still join the stem cell register but you will need to do it through:
The British Bone Marrow Registry (if you are male and aged 17-40 or female aged 17-40 and from Black, Asian, mixed or minority ethnic backgrounds)
DKMS (if you’re aged 18-55 and in good health- you will need to pay £40 to cover the cost though)
Better for Etta 