5 minutes ago I
received a call from the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at queen Mary Hospital. The
lady there started off by letting me know that the time has come to pony
up. They have received the first bill for the official activation of the
search at the US donor registry and I need to send them some money.
It wasn't till the
second part of the conversation that I found out the QMH has received the
first blood sample, done their high definition test and are happy that the match
is close enough to go ahead. They faxed their results to the USA, are waiting to
see if they will accept HK results or if they insist on doing their own tests
before giving the go ahead.
Translated that
means I HAVE A DONOR and they were waiting to
tell me about it!!! Another obstacle on my
path to a long and healthy life bites the dust!!! Another worried voice in
the back of my head has a sock stuffed in it's mouth!
To put this in
perspective: In December I found out that I had 8 potential donors on
the world wide bone marrow donor registries. Soon after that the Europeans (one
Swede, one French) fell off the list. Then the number of US potentials
changed from 6 to 4, and in one conversation a nurse in passing referred to my
"3 USA matches". For privacy reasons no one will tell me exactly why
they've crossed the others off the list, but whatever the, cause 5 of my eight
potential lifesavers were xxxx'ed out. So for the past few months my list
has been slowly shrinking and in the back of my head has been the worry that
that the remaining 3 or 4 might fall by the wayside as
well.
OK End of post. I
can't stop smiling, and I'm off to have a shower where I shall sing loudly, out
of tune, and who cares what the neighbours
think!