Thought I would revive this thread instead of starting a new one...
The son of a very close friend has been diagnosed with Aplastic Anemia about a month ago; a rare and very serious disease which requires a bone marrow transplant or death likely within 6 months
.
Wiki Link
In the process of trying to find a matching donor, parents are ruled out for some medical reason (even if they are a match!) and the best chance is with siblings. Unfortunately in this case, Josh's 3 siblings did not provide a match... only 30% of matches are found this way. The other 70% have to rely on finding a match on the worldwide donor registers.
In Josh's case, a possible single match has been found in Germany and investigations are continuing.
Anyways, in the spirit of the OP's thread above; if you are under 40 (most people on here... I went to register and could not due to being 51
) you have a chance to save someone from nearly certain death to an 80-90% chance of long term survival. The risk to the donor is low, and the chances of being called upon are around 1 in 1500 per year.
A word of warning though... if you decide to pull out if called up to make a donation (they give you several weeks notice), it is fine to do so but not in the last week before donation. This is because the patient has his bone marrow destroyed in this time to make way for the new donor stuff. Without the transplant, the patient will die.
The P-WRX community has a well earned rep for generosity and willingness to help out, so please do so if you can.
Links and further info above; thanks for reading
.