Husband has been matched for stem cell donation and it tickles my heart. I was going to say more about when (or if?!) he’s been confirmed to provide said cells but then the lady on the phone told me not to say dates and such because of internet slueths.
Y’all should sign up to be donors! (I won’t - I can’t even give blood without face planting into my cookies - but maybe I can encourage you to!)
That’s awesome. I signed up a while ago and always kind of hope I’ll get the call, but I know it’s rare.
A gal from my church did a bone marrow donation maybe 10 years ago or so. It sounded like quite the ordeal, but she ended up meeting the guy afterwards and she said that made it worthwhile.
I’m unclear on the difference between donating bone marrow and stem cells though. Is it the same thing? Maybe that’s a really dumb question.
New phone who dis?
Just bought a pixel 7. My old phone was having software problems. Though it was four years old. Couldn’t send and receive pics in text anymore and this morning wouldn’t even text. Then it just glitches and deleted all my text conversations.
The new phone is nice, the keyboard is a bit bigger too so thats easier for me to type on.
been on the bone marrow list for almost 30 years. Had calls early on to do further testing, but never got close.
I may have aged out. Didn’t like when I heard of the new way to collect ( similar to a 4 hour pheresis) I would have preferred the needle to the hip
I was on the bone marrow list for years, but recently aged out. I was matched once, and was interviewed for about an hour. But they never did ask me to donate. They told me up front it was only a partial match, and they’d keep looking in case they could find a better match. Also, various stuff had to go right with the donor to even get to the point of a donation. It was a weird hurry-up-and-wait situation. They never actually told me what happened. I hope the other person survived.
I can confirm that this is the approach. It will take from 6-8 hours and is indeed being used to treat 1-2 of the listed conditions for somebody very, very far away. The match is confirmed (the process started a while ago) and we are up to the point that we have a date and are being flown to another location to make the donation (they fly me there too to entertain OddSox while they suck the juices out of him and probably also to make sure he doesn’t die but there’s nurses for that too).
There’s some prep work we have to do (and promises of not doing unhealthly or dangerous things for a period of time). A lot of continued bloodwork to confirm and reconfirm there’s no bad stuff in OddCells. There’s also an off-label injection that we’ll need to do to get his blood cell count up before the siphoning, and some other recommended things like taking copious amounts of Tums (for calcium).
The poor soul on the other side of this transaction is anonymous until afterwards, then we can write them exactly one letter. It’s likely we won’t know how it goes (long term) because of time and distance. The procedure they have to go through on their side is rough - entirely removing all the diseased cells (i.e., basically killing the person) to be replaced by healthy OddCells immediately afterwards. I know the condition they have (I believe it’s what took out my own grandmother) and I’m really rooting for them.
When I went back for bread I stopped at a gyro truck I’ve been meaning to try.
I have been procrastinating on an unpleasant task at work for several weeks now and today I finally bit the bullet and got it taken care of. And while it will remain my least favorite thing about my job, it wasn’t nearly as big of a deal as I’d made it out to be in my head.
And more importantly it’s done now and I don’t have to do it again for another ~11.5 months.
So, are you going to get a gyro truck?
My eldest kid works on the bone marrow transplant unit. Many of the patients do autologous transplants. I’ll have to ask what things generally prevent that. I’d assume certain genetic issues might, like sickle cell disease.
After years of taking students hunting/fishing/etc, I got invited by some students to go ice fishing this weekend. Yeah, I’m still driving, and yeah, can I bring all my equipment and the bait lol, but I’m not organizing it - and someone else is bringing food (I always handle all the food on these things). So, that’s really really nice. Double plus good, they invited me, but were going on their own anyway - so we’re getting some sustainability. And, they’re inviting one of their friends who hasn’t fished before - passing it on to the next group of folks.
Holy crap. I’m finally done, the city inspector signed off on my bath remodel this morning.
I don’t know why it says Feb 14, and I don’t care.
ETA: Oh, my permit expired Feb 15 so I think they back-dated it for me. Cool.
This is a sad thought update to a happy thought - the stem cell donation is delayed until further notice. Our patient relapsed and we must wait until they recover. Hang in there OddMatch.
Went to Costco today and only spent $236. Well below average.
We got some cinammon rolls and pastel de nata from a baker friend.
OMG, the cinammon rolls were fantastic!!! 
There’s a charity that collects donated blankets and distributes them to kids in foster care. It happens to be headquartered near me, but they have contacts in every state and Canada for dropping off donated blankets. I have decided to make some panel quilts (super straightforward quilts with large prints of fabric, very little piecing) and donate. I bought 25 labels and hope to use all of them by the end of 2024.
I also bought 10 fleece kits - the kind you cut and tie. Those come with labels already attached. I hope to have a few people over sometime soon to make them, and will make a few with my kids.
They ship both the labels and the quilts all over, if anyone is interested. And blanket making is a fun corporate team building type of event, the fleece blankets get made very quickly. They cost around $16 apiece (shipped) or $13 (local pick up) and you can opt to pay for shipping costs to get them by a guaranteed date (but you can also opt to not pay for shipping and others’ donated money will cover it).
