On her birthday, my aunt called my mom to tell her she has a match. I am ever so tempted to break with journalistic discipline and use an exclamation point.
!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
My mom and the Be The Match Registry
This post is an unpaid endorsement for the Be The Match Registry, a nonprofit organization that matches willing, unrelated stem cell donors with patients who need a life-saving transplant. To become a registry member or donate to the cause, visit www.bethematch.org.
My mom was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at the end of May. I am happy to say that she is in complete remission and finished her first round of consolidation chemotherapy Saturday. Consolidation is a type of chemo given to patients who are in complete remission after receiving induction chemotherapy. You can think of consolidation chemo as a way of kicking the cancer when it is down.
She has handled her treatment well, and her body has responded in the best ways possible. Her immune system will be weak after treatments and strong after recoveries, but her spirits are consistently high. She is often out and about in Chapel Hill and Durham.
My mom's cytogenetic profile signaled doctors that she is at a high risk for relapse, so getting an allogeneic stem cell transplant is her best chance for a cure. Allogeneic means that the transplant will come from another person. Stem cells are cells that produce all types of blood cells.
Allogeneic transplant donors can be a related family member or an unrelated donor. Doctors examine cheek cell swabs from the patient and prospective donors to determine the best match. My family is hoping that my mom's sister, Martha, will be a good match for my mom. Doctors say that a sibling will match 25 percent of the time. Parent and child matches are even less common.
If Martha does not match, the hospital will match my mom with the best-fit donor from the National Marrow Donor Program's Be The Match Registry, a list of people who have pledged to donate bone marrow or stem cells to any patient in need of a transplant. Doctors told us that my mom will more than likely find a suitable donor in the registry because she is white. The registry encourages anyone to join because a larger pool of donors will produce better matches for all patients, but they also urgently need donors who are black, American Indian, Asian, Pacific, Hispanic and of multiple races.
The NMDP has facilitated nearly 40,000 transplants worldwide. Seventy percent of all allogeneic transplant patients do not match with a family member and need an unrelated donor match. The chance that two random individuals are a suitable match is one in 20,000. Many donors are not only the best match for a patient; they are the only match on the registry of 12 million people.
My sister and I joined the registry online and are letting our friends know about it. Be The Match sent us cheek swabs and information, and we swabbed and sent them back. The donor process is virtually painless and completely free. Be The Match reimburses all travel and related costs for all donors. Most people we know in the registry have never been called to donate but pledge to do so when a patient needs them.
Doctors draw donations through a marrow harvest or a peripheral blood stem cell donation depending on the patient's needs. You are probably most familiar with a marrow harvest, which is actually the least common donation method. It is a surgical, out-patient procedure in which doctors use anesthesia and needles to withdraw liquid marrow from the pelvic bone. My mom is terrified of needles and had several bone marrow biopsies; she said they were easy. She gets goofy drugs for a few hours, but she never experienced pain. She prefers a marrow harvest to a needle prick without anesthesia.
PBSC donations are much more common. For five days before the donation, the donor receives daily injections of a drug that increases blood-forming stem cells in the bloodstream. On the fifth day, the donor's blood is removed through a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the stem cells. The remaining blood is returned to the donor through the other arm. The process is similar to donating platelets. Donors may experience a headache or bone or muscle aches before the collection.
Deciding to join the registry is a very personal decision. I did not know I had the opportunity to be someone's living best chance at life before my mom got sick; I thought only family members could donate. I want you to know that you could be someone's best chance if you decide to join the registry. Receiving a transplant is a transplant patient's best or only hope for a cure.
Please ask me questions if you have any even though you can probably get all your answers at www.bethematch.org. Joining the registry is quick and easy. The site also accepts donations that help to aid families with uninsured transplant costs, fully reimburse donors, fund medical research and add donors to the registry.
People tell me that they think about and pray for my family often. I always think about them in return whenever we get good news. I hope our next good news will be that my mom has a match.
My mom was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at the end of May. I am happy to say that she is in complete remission and finished her first round of consolidation chemotherapy Saturday. Consolidation is a type of chemo given to patients who are in complete remission after receiving induction chemotherapy. You can think of consolidation chemo as a way of kicking the cancer when it is down.
She has handled her treatment well, and her body has responded in the best ways possible. Her immune system will be weak after treatments and strong after recoveries, but her spirits are consistently high. She is often out and about in Chapel Hill and Durham.
My mom's cytogenetic profile signaled doctors that she is at a high risk for relapse, so getting an allogeneic stem cell transplant is her best chance for a cure. Allogeneic means that the transplant will come from another person. Stem cells are cells that produce all types of blood cells.
Allogeneic transplant donors can be a related family member or an unrelated donor. Doctors examine cheek cell swabs from the patient and prospective donors to determine the best match. My family is hoping that my mom's sister, Martha, will be a good match for my mom. Doctors say that a sibling will match 25 percent of the time. Parent and child matches are even less common.
If Martha does not match, the hospital will match my mom with the best-fit donor from the National Marrow Donor Program's Be The Match Registry, a list of people who have pledged to donate bone marrow or stem cells to any patient in need of a transplant. Doctors told us that my mom will more than likely find a suitable donor in the registry because she is white. The registry encourages anyone to join because a larger pool of donors will produce better matches for all patients, but they also urgently need donors who are black, American Indian, Asian, Pacific, Hispanic and of multiple races.
The NMDP has facilitated nearly 40,000 transplants worldwide. Seventy percent of all allogeneic transplant patients do not match with a family member and need an unrelated donor match. The chance that two random individuals are a suitable match is one in 20,000. Many donors are not only the best match for a patient; they are the only match on the registry of 12 million people.
My sister and I joined the registry online and are letting our friends know about it. Be The Match sent us cheek swabs and information, and we swabbed and sent them back. The donor process is virtually painless and completely free. Be The Match reimburses all travel and related costs for all donors. Most people we know in the registry have never been called to donate but pledge to do so when a patient needs them.
Doctors draw donations through a marrow harvest or a peripheral blood stem cell donation depending on the patient's needs. You are probably most familiar with a marrow harvest, which is actually the least common donation method. It is a surgical, out-patient procedure in which doctors use anesthesia and needles to withdraw liquid marrow from the pelvic bone. My mom is terrified of needles and had several bone marrow biopsies; she said they were easy. She gets goofy drugs for a few hours, but she never experienced pain. She prefers a marrow harvest to a needle prick without anesthesia.
PBSC donations are much more common. For five days before the donation, the donor receives daily injections of a drug that increases blood-forming stem cells in the bloodstream. On the fifth day, the donor's blood is removed through a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the stem cells. The remaining blood is returned to the donor through the other arm. The process is similar to donating platelets. Donors may experience a headache or bone or muscle aches before the collection.
Deciding to join the registry is a very personal decision. I did not know I had the opportunity to be someone's living best chance at life before my mom got sick; I thought only family members could donate. I want you to know that you could be someone's best chance if you decide to join the registry. Receiving a transplant is a transplant patient's best or only hope for a cure.
Please ask me questions if you have any even though you can probably get all your answers at www.bethematch.org. Joining the registry is quick and easy. The site also accepts donations that help to aid families with uninsured transplant costs, fully reimburse donors, fund medical research and add donors to the registry.
People tell me that they think about and pray for my family often. I always think about them in return whenever we get good news. I hope our next good news will be that my mom has a match.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Company
As a teacher who refused to write about his kids or job, I found that my own life did not give me as much to write about as it used to. Recently life gave me plenty to write about, but I do not want to write about it. I mean, I could. I might some day. But I do not think I will write anything about it today.
I will say that life is best experienced with other people. That sounds obvious, but men like the lone cowboy fantasy. John Wayne claimed to not need anything except his horse and a beer but allegedly died with 40 pounds of fecal matter in his intestines. The man was stressed out.
You reach a point in your 20s when making friends is not as easy as sitting next to someone new in class. If you are educated, then your friends probably have jobs and cannot play catch with you at the park. So you have at least some moments of solitude that do not seem entirely natural. Some stew. Some date. Others embrace the solitude as cowboys and cowgirls should.
I remember going out by myself for the first time. I was incredibly nervous. A game was on television, so I thought I would look normal sitting at the bar and watching. Of course the game ended as soon as I got through the door. Not knowing how to behave, I walked to the bar without bending my knees and elbows to embrace the cowboy inside, a newly discovered paraplegic infant underneath an imaginary Stetson. Or maybe I subconsciously felt all that fecal matter and knew that I would fall to the floor if I bent my knees. I just do not know.
"A grown, nondisabled man just walked in like a five month old," you might have whispered to your friend, not knowing it was me because you were afraid to look twice.
"What do babies walk like?" he would have asked.
"Never mind," you would have said. "Don't look. He is hideous."
The truth is that I did not have fun that night until my girlfriend came, and I doubt it had anything to do with my entrance. Not even drinking was fun to do by myself. My friends tell me that drinking by yourself is surely a bad sign. I think drinking by yourself and enjoying it is a bad sign. But who would enjoy that? Sometimes you just have to do it even though you do not enjoy it. That, to me, is a good sign.
That is all I have to say right now about the company of other people.
I will say that life is best experienced with other people. That sounds obvious, but men like the lone cowboy fantasy. John Wayne claimed to not need anything except his horse and a beer but allegedly died with 40 pounds of fecal matter in his intestines. The man was stressed out.
You reach a point in your 20s when making friends is not as easy as sitting next to someone new in class. If you are educated, then your friends probably have jobs and cannot play catch with you at the park. So you have at least some moments of solitude that do not seem entirely natural. Some stew. Some date. Others embrace the solitude as cowboys and cowgirls should.
I remember going out by myself for the first time. I was incredibly nervous. A game was on television, so I thought I would look normal sitting at the bar and watching. Of course the game ended as soon as I got through the door. Not knowing how to behave, I walked to the bar without bending my knees and elbows to embrace the cowboy inside, a newly discovered paraplegic infant underneath an imaginary Stetson. Or maybe I subconsciously felt all that fecal matter and knew that I would fall to the floor if I bent my knees. I just do not know.
"A grown, nondisabled man just walked in like a five month old," you might have whispered to your friend, not knowing it was me because you were afraid to look twice.
"What do babies walk like?" he would have asked.
"Never mind," you would have said. "Don't look. He is hideous."
The truth is that I did not have fun that night until my girlfriend came, and I doubt it had anything to do with my entrance. Not even drinking was fun to do by myself. My friends tell me that drinking by yourself is surely a bad sign. I think drinking by yourself and enjoying it is a bad sign. But who would enjoy that? Sometimes you just have to do it even though you do not enjoy it. That, to me, is a good sign.
That is all I have to say right now about the company of other people.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Competitor
A few weeks ago I lost an online chess game to one of those guys who reminded me why so few people play chess. I told him that chess teaches a lot but did not teach him manners. He did not like that.
"Shut up and play me again," he typed. I tried as hard as I could to make him poop his pants but failed in the last second. I know conversing with this guy was pathetic, but I could not help myself. That poor bloke had not learned by his 20s or 30s what I learned when I was 4. I figure I earned some sort of moral credit to spend on myself since I lost 20 minutes of my life interacting with the guy.
I started to think about how I approach different types of competition. I coached junior varsity baseball for two years and took a laid back approach to the game. The head coach, Roddy, contrasted my style. He understood how to prepare boys to play like men every day. I marveled at the terrific lies he told the players.
"I hate Carrboro more than any other team," he said with his signature composed intensity. "We will not lose to Carrboro tomorrow." Carrboro is a town of granola eating, bike riding, modestly overachieving hippies. I might have liked Carrboro's team even more than our own if I got to know them, but I kept my mouth shut. Twenty-four hours after Roddy's pep talk, our team notched a 30-run win in three innings after we declared our own run rule. Nobody hated Carrboro anymore, and our kids forgot that their coach said he did. Kids are funny.
I would be a terrible head coach because I would tell the kids the truth that I wanted them to play hard all the time regardless of the opponent. Sometimes I did not even know who the opponent was until the middle of the first. Coaching with Roddy showed me that saying what was on my mind was not nearly as important as saying what was not on the team's mind. I never had anything on my mind anyway.
To me, individual competition is more personal than being part of a team. I cannot blame anyone but myself nor credit anyone but my opponent when I lose a chess or disc golf match. I am addicted to that challenge. The one exception to this rule is doubles table tennis, which became a problem for me at Miami University. I learned to never upset a teammate with a paddle in his hand. I will tell those stories some other time.
One of the algebra teachers in my department will leave this summer, so the rest of us will take his classes in the fall. When we heard the news at our daily department lunch, I turned to Jennifer, the other algebra teacher.
"Paper-rock-scissors for the algebra class," I said instinctively.
"How about we run a triathlon instead?" she asked with imposing confidence. Jennifer once qualified for the Hawaii Ironman.
"Nah," I said.
"Why don't you two have a peanut butter and jelly eating contest?" another colleague suggested. The department convinced me that Jennifer would beat me at anything except a sandwich eating contest or paper-rock-scissors, in which I figured to be a 40-60 dog. My instincts were almost right.
"How about a pull-up contest?" Jennifer asked. The three passed minutes had not changed my mind about a legitimate physical challenge with a world-class athlete.
"I'll bet you can't do 10," my friend Seth said. Now that I could not let slide. I started to prep for an after school date with the high school weight room by pounding two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Protein, sugar and a bit of water, I thought, was all I needed to beat an iron bar that was not a triathlete.
I was wrong. Once I got to three, I knew that 10 was impossible. My penalties were a sore abdomen and Thursday departmental tutoring for the rest of the semester. I will live.
"Shut up and play me again," he typed. I tried as hard as I could to make him poop his pants but failed in the last second. I know conversing with this guy was pathetic, but I could not help myself. That poor bloke had not learned by his 20s or 30s what I learned when I was 4. I figure I earned some sort of moral credit to spend on myself since I lost 20 minutes of my life interacting with the guy.
I started to think about how I approach different types of competition. I coached junior varsity baseball for two years and took a laid back approach to the game. The head coach, Roddy, contrasted my style. He understood how to prepare boys to play like men every day. I marveled at the terrific lies he told the players.
"I hate Carrboro more than any other team," he said with his signature composed intensity. "We will not lose to Carrboro tomorrow." Carrboro is a town of granola eating, bike riding, modestly overachieving hippies. I might have liked Carrboro's team even more than our own if I got to know them, but I kept my mouth shut. Twenty-four hours after Roddy's pep talk, our team notched a 30-run win in three innings after we declared our own run rule. Nobody hated Carrboro anymore, and our kids forgot that their coach said he did. Kids are funny.
I would be a terrible head coach because I would tell the kids the truth that I wanted them to play hard all the time regardless of the opponent. Sometimes I did not even know who the opponent was until the middle of the first. Coaching with Roddy showed me that saying what was on my mind was not nearly as important as saying what was not on the team's mind. I never had anything on my mind anyway.
To me, individual competition is more personal than being part of a team. I cannot blame anyone but myself nor credit anyone but my opponent when I lose a chess or disc golf match. I am addicted to that challenge. The one exception to this rule is doubles table tennis, which became a problem for me at Miami University. I learned to never upset a teammate with a paddle in his hand. I will tell those stories some other time.
One of the algebra teachers in my department will leave this summer, so the rest of us will take his classes in the fall. When we heard the news at our daily department lunch, I turned to Jennifer, the other algebra teacher.
"Paper-rock-scissors for the algebra class," I said instinctively.
"How about we run a triathlon instead?" she asked with imposing confidence. Jennifer once qualified for the Hawaii Ironman.
"Nah," I said.
"Why don't you two have a peanut butter and jelly eating contest?" another colleague suggested. The department convinced me that Jennifer would beat me at anything except a sandwich eating contest or paper-rock-scissors, in which I figured to be a 40-60 dog. My instincts were almost right.
"How about a pull-up contest?" Jennifer asked. The three passed minutes had not changed my mind about a legitimate physical challenge with a world-class athlete.
"I'll bet you can't do 10," my friend Seth said. Now that I could not let slide. I started to prep for an after school date with the high school weight room by pounding two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Protein, sugar and a bit of water, I thought, was all I needed to beat an iron bar that was not a triathlete.
I was wrong. Once I got to three, I knew that 10 was impossible. My penalties were a sore abdomen and Thursday departmental tutoring for the rest of the semester. I will live.
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