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Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

danshapiro.com

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Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#51

Post by onemoreact »

Egregore wrote: post #50
danshapiro wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your second link: PBSC donation is a non-surgical procedure done in an outpatient clinic. PBSC donors receive daily injections of a drug called filgrastim for five days, to increase the number of blood-forming cells in the bloodstream. Then, through a process called apheresis, a donor's blood is removed through a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells. The remai…

Is it safe from hygienic point of view? What are the chances of catching a disease from previous donor during this procedure?

You have vary close to zero risk from prior donor's. Sterilization tools are incredibly effective, and for hard to sterilize things like needles they just dispose of them.

Now reviving a donating is still risky, but usually it's a choice between death and some lessor risks.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#52

Post by sixtofour »

nknight wrote: post #10
there wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

according to the story, the post office did better than any phone provider would. he moved to a new location, maybe years later, and a piece of mail still followed him to his new address. i'm sure the registry gets notified of forwarding address changes for people on their lists, so they could in theory keep up with you even if you moved a bunch of times (as long as you forwarded from at least your last address). if…

I seriously doubt the post office had much to do with tracking him down. My repeated experience with the USPS is that they pay absolutely no attention to mail forwarding requests, ever. It's far more likely that someone at the matching network did some googling. And I don't need a new phone number, that's kind of the point. I can switch providers and still keep my number. I can move to the other side of the country a…

I've wanted that for years from the post office: one address, your stuff follows you wherever, you never change your "address" you just update your location with the post office. I explained the idea to my first wife in the late seventies, and she thought I was solving a non-problem.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#54

Post by bglusman »

I signed up for the program when I read that story, and just sent my cheek swabs in (4 of them!) this past weekend... seems like a no brainer if you actually want to make a difference in the world :-)

I wonder if there's a decent solution on the forwarding thing with some kind of unique id as metadata on an address, so if something's important someone in possession of the old address can find you through the ID? Or maybe that's just not practical, as no one would use it/retain the info unneeded in the short term.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#56

Post by pgroves »

nknight wrote: post #3

Ouch. To the extent it's still relevant in the modern world, our postal system really needs to work a little more like the phone system. I can be pretty much anywhere in the US (or really, the world, if I want to pay international roaming fees), someone can dial my well-known phone number, and my phone will ring. For ordinary first class mail, I should be able to generate unique ID numbers on the USPS's website, and…

I had a high-school teacher that told us you could write a SSN on an envelope and the postal service was required by law to get it to the person. He claimed to have tried it out by sending himself a letter, but it took many months to arrive.

You'll notice from my hedging that I only half believe the story. Also, it may be a true story, but may have happened in the '50's or something.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#57

Post by mikeash »

biot wrote: post #19
there wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

according to the story, the post office did better than any phone provider would. he moved to a new location, maybe years later, and a piece of mail still followed him to his new address. i'm sure the registry gets notified of forwarding address changes for people on their lists, so they could in theory keep up with you even if you moved a bunch of times (as long as you forwarded from at least your last address). if…

It appears to not have been the post office that "did better than any phone provider would": > Did you know that, when the marrow donation center finds a > match, they try desperately to reach the potential donor? Even > if that person has moved from their dorm room long ago, even if > their contact information has changed, even if they’re in a > different state, even if 16 years have passed? They try. They > look al…

They succeeded in sending mail to his last known address, which was his old company. He simply failed to set up forwarding from there (although he tried, it apparently didn't work) and didn't pay attention to what get sent there.

The phone equivalent would have tried his dorm and that would have been that. He never would have even known that they had tried to contact him.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#59

Post by gregable »

timr wrote: post #7

"At the time, the only way to donate marrow was to basically have someone drill holes in your bones and drain your skeleton, which kind of terrified me. Nowadays, of course, most donations require nothing more than sitting still for a few hours with an IV watching television." That actually isn't really true. Marrow donations still require anesthesia and a surgical procedure. In the interest of providing full informa…

I actually am currently in the process of donation. I had been scheduled but the patient became too sick and I'm basically in a holding pattern at this point. I can confirm that the process for me involved no surgery or anesthesia and would not in the future either. It's a possibility but it's unlikely and you get to know which situation it is up front and can always opt-out at absolutely any step of the process.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#60

Post by llimllib »

Egregore wrote: post #50
danshapiro wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your second link: PBSC donation is a non-surgical procedure done in an outpatient clinic. PBSC donors receive daily injections of a drug called filgrastim for five days, to increase the number of blood-forming cells in the bloodstream. Then, through a process called apheresis, a donor's blood is removed through a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells. The remai…

Is it safe from hygienic point of view? What are the chances of catching a disease from previous donor during this procedure?

> What are the chances of catching a disease from previous donor during this procedure?

Effectively zero, as onemoreact says.

The chance of becoming infected due to unsterile conditions or opportunistic infections is higher than zero, however. This page is the best I've been able to find so far:

http://www.livingdonorsonline.org/marrow/marrow5.htm

That page says you're taking about a 1 in 370 chance of serious complications:

> life-threatening complications for all marrow donors have been rare; there were 13 reported in 4,800 [0.27%, or one in 370] analyzed marrow donations.

edit: I found a small-n study that is very positive:

edit 2: I omitted the small-n study, because I found a much bigger one:

> The experience at a single institution in harvesting marrow for allogeneic transplantation on 1,270 occasions from 1,160 normal donors is presented in detail, together with an analysis of all the donor complications... Hospitalization time was three days or less for 99% of the procedures. Six donors had life-threatening complications; three of a cardiopulmonary and two of an infectious nature, and one cerebrovascular embolic episode. Significant operative site morbidity, usually transient neuropathies, occurred in ten procedures.

http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/content/64/3/630.s...

tl;dr: marrow donation carries about a 1% chance of any complications at all, and a .5% chance of life-threatening complications.

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