"It's all so real now"

Today I heard two men comment that, today, their shared experience seemed "all so real now". I've never met these men before. I'll likely never meet either one of them again. But I've been in the shoes of one of them and I know exactly what he means.

Nine years and a couple of weeks ago, I recieved a letter in the mail that changed my life. It was from the National Marrow Donor Program and it informed me that I was a potential bone marrow match for a then 30 year old woman with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. It asked if I would consent to further testing to confirm the match.

I did, and I was.

I ended up donating three times for this woman I did not know. It boggled me to think that through some biological coincidence, cells from my body had the potential to save the life of a stranger. It still boggles me how being a match is something completely beyond our control, and how very very easy it is to be a marrow donor.

Nine months and six days after the first donation I was in a suburban Cleveland neighborhood, walking up a driveway, to meet my bone marrow recipient for the first time. Her name was Erin Jones, and she was a hero. Meeting Erin that July afternoon was a defining moment for me. Meeting her mother a few minutes later, however, crystallized my entire experience into something incredibly real. Up until then, I would have told you that what I'd agreed to do was a very small thing. It is, for the donor. Once you match, all you ever do is show up and sign papers and lay there. You don't have to be good at anything, you don't have to do any work for it, have any talents, demonstrate any skills...you don't even have to be a nice or decent person. All you have to do is be the match. Other people involved in the process do all the work...but as a donor, all I had to do was show up. So small. Yet, when Erin's mother, Diane, wrapped her arms around me and started to sob, "Thank you, thank you. Oh my God, thank you", it was in that moment that my "very small thing" became real to me. In that moment, I knew that what was a "very small thing" for me was not small at all for someone else. It was enormous to them. Erin wasn't just an unknown woman a couple of years older than myself: She was someone's child. She was a sister, a wife, a mother, a friend, a police officer...but first, she was someone's child.

Being able to give someone hope for a second chance at living? Not such a "very small thing" to her family. Meeting them that day moved the whole experience into a very concrete reality for me.

Today, I heard another marrow donor describe it in much the same way as he prepared to meet, for the very first time, his own marrow recipient. "Today, it is real."

In January, 2008, Dr. Wesley Hamilton (of Abilene, TX) donated his marrow for Dany Mercado of Kitchener, ONT, Canada. Dany recieved his transplant at Karmanos Cancer Center, here in Detroit, MI. Today, at Karmanos, they met each other in person.

There wasn't a dry eye in the house as those two men embraced and held on to each other.

When I heard Dany tell a reporter that "It's all so real now"...words that both Erin and I used to describe our first meeting... my heart grinned.

I know what you mean, Dany and Wes. I know what you mean.

(See Dany and Wes meeting here)