Bone Marrow Drive

Christopher Barron
Another speaker at our Kick-Off, one of our assistant running coaches, Melissa Muilenberg, spoke about her 9 year old nephew, Christopher Barron, who has had leukemia since he was 3. His initial battle against Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has know regressed into a fight against the more aggressive Acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Doctors determined last month that he was no longer curable through chemotherapy, and that a bone marrow transplant would be his best hope.

The Marrow organisation provide swab kits in the mail for anyone that signs up for their registry. Melissa spoke about mother she had spoken to, whose child did not find a donor match, and passed away. But the donor drive to find a match for her son, ended up providing 10 matches for other people, who could get life saving transplants.

There are currently 6,000 people seeking a match on for a bone marrow transplant. Only 2 in every 10 find a match. What better way to make a real difference to the survival of a fellow human than to donate directly in this way.

I hope anyone that reads this at least checks out the Marrow donation webpage and hopefully signs up as a donor.