July is African American Bone Marrow Awareness Month, as a national organization reaches out to find a donor for a beloved Orange-and-Chatham judge battling blood cancer.
Two “Save the Fox” events are scheduled for today and Saturday at University Place, to register folks willing to donate marrow or stem cells to help someone with blood cancer – and maybe, even Superior Court Judge Carol Fox.
Fox was diagnosed back in April. Since then, the community has rallied around him with the “Save the Fox” campaign, which you can find on Facebook.
An event for Fox at Chapel Hill’s Bean & Barrel restaurant last week brought out a lot of people eager to swab the inside of their cheeks to get on the marrow registry.
Bob Murray is donor recruitment coordinator for the organization Delete Blood Cancer.
“We had several folks that came out to support Carl, just to be with him,” said Murray, who added that “folks who hadn’t seen him for years were there.”
Going through all the swab samples, he said, may take several weeks.
“Worst-case scenario, we’d like to say four-to-six weeks,” said Murray. “It typically can get done faster. But because of the analysis and testing that has to be done on each of those swabs, it does take time.”
Nationally, only seven percent of the marrow registry is made up of African Americans. The goal is to get healthy people of all ethnicities, between the ages of 18 and 55, to swab and register. Locally, volunteers are reaching out to leaders in African-American church communities to get more people registered.
“What you’re looking for are genetic markers that are common within ethnicities,” said Murray. “So, it’s not necessarily an African American that is going to be Carl’s donor. But we do need somebody that has his genetic makeup.”
Murray said that one challenge in registering marrow donors is that there are a lot of fears and misconceptions out there.
Many people have heard that donating marrow is painful. But nearly 80 percent of the donations are actually of stem cells, not marrow.
“What that means is that they’re going to be taking blood out of your arm, extracting the stem cells out of the blood, and returning the red cells to the other arm.”
That process, he said, takes four-to-six hours.
If an actual bone marrow donation is requited, the donor is placed under general anesthesia, and marrow is extracted from the pelvic bone.
“When you wake up, an hour-and-a-half-to-two hours later, you’ll feel like you’ve fallen and hurt your tailbone, or been kicked in the rear, really, really hard,” said Murray.
“Now, my opinion is, if I can ever get to that point, to save someone’s life, then kick me in the rear.”
If you’d like to help kick blood cancer in the rear, the registration drive at University Mall lasts from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m.
Saturday’s event is from 10 until 4.
Hi ? am so sorry about your health am willing to see if am a donor to help you with your health. If it possible to visit you, you been on my mind for a while. Contact me at my email. May god bless you may you pull though this. You are not alone.