It's funny how it isn’tuntil looking back on things in your life that you begin to find meaning andunderstanding for the significance of different events that have taken place.When I was 18, my mom took me to a hall to get signed up for the unrelated bonemarrow donor registry.
This meant very little to me at the time. It was an event being held to find a donor for a little girl, whom I didn't know. I didn't really even know what bone marrow meant, but mom thought it was a good idea to do, soI just went with the flow.
Now jump forward 9 years and where am I working? With blood disorders! It's funny how things happen. I'm glad mom was the one to point me in this direction, without either of us knowing how important this would be to me. But this wasn’t the only time something like this happened, to start we have to go back again into my past.
As a kid, I grew up on Fairway Drive, with a few very close friends that lived on the street (and area) while we grew. Brian W or BW lived across the street from me. He was my age, but hung out with my brother more as kids. With that said, BW and I were the crazy ones of our friends; always jumping over trees and going door to door selling hockey sticks as vacuum cleaners. BW was much more adventurous and much stronger than me; he was able to climb up lamp posts and do other crazy things.Getting hit in the head with a football and falling off a stop sign was just another day in the life of BW.
As we grew older we all moved away from the street, but our family homes were still there. From time to time we would run into each other and catch up briefly on life events or we would hear updates from our families.
As we grew up BW remained very adventurous and seemed very cool to me. He's done a lot in his time here on earth. He went to Ecuador one year to climb the volcanoes. You know...... actual mountain climbing with ice picks. Things that I can't even pretend to comprehend.
He fell in love, hadkids and married young. Well maybe not young in other people's standards, but young to me. He had what he thought was the dream life. He had a great house, abeautiful wife, son and daughter. From the outside looking in it was perfect. Even from his eyes it was perfect. Until one day, everything changed; his marriage ended and he had to deal with lies and fight for a month to see hiskids. Luckily all that time climbing the mountains paid off and his perseverance and strength paid off and he was reunited with his children. The battle took its toll though, not only was he destroyed that his family had been ripped apart; he lost 60 pounds in a month from all of the stress.
Imagine this happened toyou?
Wouldn't you be a little bit resentful and feeling like life was pretty shitty, and really wouldn't you be feeling sorry for yourself?
Well I know that I would.
As fate would have it,months earlier BW had seen a link to onematch.ca come up on his Facebook news feed. (Yes I do like to put things like this up!) He decided that is seemed easy enough and that he would take the necessary steps needed to join the unrelated bone marrow donor registry.
Now remember just because you sign up doesn't mean that you will ever be a match. You can be on the registry from 18-50 years old and never be called upon.
Well not my magical BW. He got a call almost immediately! He'd been identified as a potential match and was asked to come in and do more testing. Brian agreed to begin the process and went in to have all the testing and paperwork done. And wouldn’t you know, he finds out he is a match.
To me this is the coolest thing that I have ever heard. He was literally a super hero, potentially saving a stranger's life, with no rewards, other than knowing thatwhat you did was right and honourable.
One day BW and I were both on Fairway Dr visiting our folks when he yelled across the street,
“Hey do you like onematch?”
I yell back, confused
"Yes, why do you?"
Now I'm used to weird questions, because well I am weird, but I couldn’t help wondering where this came from. He then fills me in that he would be donating his bone marrow the next week.
We parted ways but continued chatting over bbm as I had to know everything!
It was such a small world. He was dealing with the transplant coordinators that I had worked with for years. I also knew the docs that were going to be doing the harvest(collecting BW's stem cells from his blood) I knew the drug (Neupogen) they would be giving him before hand to stimulate the bone marrow to produce more stem cells in order fo them to be harvested. I can't tell you how much I loved this story.
The Neupogen caused BW alot of bone pain. But do you think he complained?
He was just happy to help save a life. God I love him for this!
It's amazing that even when life seems to be ripping out your heart, that you are able to find the courage to save another person's life. Brian may never find out who the recipient was, how they did, where they live, anything. But what he did was absolutely amazing. Everyone needs to take the time to go to onematch.ca and join the unrelated registry!
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