Would you save a life?

 

So I have a question for you...if you could save someone's life today, right now, would you??

 

Today, I did something for myself. Something that I've thought about for a while, prayed about even more and finally had the opportunity to accomplish.

 

I registered to become a bone marrow donor.

 

Why?

 

There's a few different reasons.

 

For one, I'm an organ donor on my license, but what does that really mean...it means that I have to die in order to save someone's life. And if I am able to donate anything, I want to donate it all. If I can save someone's life, then I want that opportunity. But what about right now. What about today. Why not save someone today, if I could. 

 

Which comes to my next reason....Kenzi. Many of you are probably wondering how our 13 month old daughter made me decide to do this. And it's because we potentially could have needed this. Now, I completely and utterly understand that Kenzi was never truly at risk for leukemia and only had one out of the many symptoms of this, BUT it was a possibility. Her story COULD have been very different! When Kenzi had a suppression of her neutrophils, one of the things that was a possibility was a disease called Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) and it's basically pre-leukemia. I thank God every single day, that Kenzi's blood count problem was related to a viral illness, but also know first hand what our life could be like if she would have had MDS. I work at the pediatric clinic and one of our patients has this. And she needed a bone marrow transplant to cure it. The past few weeks at work, there have been e-mails going about a bone marrow donor drive. One of our physicians at Sanford has MDS and has relapsed. He needs a bone marrow transplant and doesn't have any living relatives who are a match. So he needs to use a non-related living donor for his transplant and they are trying to find a match for him on the donor list. After reading that e-mail and seeing our patient, it hit home that we could have been that family...needing a bone marrow transplant for Kenzi and what if no one in our family was a match for her. We would need this list for our baby girl to survive. And while we are not in that situation, someone...a lot of someones actually, are in that situation. Needing a bone marrow transplant and desperately trying to find a match to save their life. 

 

 

So here I am...a now registered member of the National Marrow Donor Program. And I am proud.

 

Who knows if I will ever get the chance to give someone life, but if I'm needed...I'll be there. Because my girl may have needed it...someone's daughter, son, husband, cousin, niece, uncle or brother may need it...and maybe, just maybe, I could be that someone!