The seriousness of what I was doing didn't really hit me until I was walking through the doors of Ball Memorial to get my first set of injections of filgrastim. Suddenly the whole experience wasn't a distant procedure sometime in the future. It was happening now and to multiple people.
My first day of Christmas break was also the first day of my filgrastim injections. I would have four more sets of injections before donating my peripheral blood stem cells to a young man with lymphoma for Be the Match, the National Marrow Donor Program.
All I could think was that while most Ball State students were sleeping snug in there beds or decorating their Christmas trees back home, I was wandering around the confusing lobby of Ball Memorial Hospital trying to make my appointment on time and asking myself why everything smelled like latex gloves.
My first injection took about an hour and a half since I had to wait around before the injection and then wait for 15 minutes afterwards to see if I had an allergic reaction.
At the same time, somewhere in the country, my future recipient was starting procedures that would eventually take all of his bone marrow out of his body, leaving him waiting on my blood to replace it with. The truth of the matter is that this young man's life was in my hands. I had the option to back out up until they actually took the donation. Doing so at this point however would mean that this human being, somewhere, would die because of me.
It's a heavy thought that seemed to completely skip my mind until those hospital doors shut behind me. It was then that I finally realized how attached to this stranger I really was.
The next three sets of injections would be done at my house over three days with the aid of a home healthcare agency provided by Be the Match.
The side effects of the filgrastim kicked in on the second day. What started as an ache in my tailbone quickly spread to an ache throughout my whole body and a feeling of weakness that literally had me scared of moving to quickly for fear of breaking a bone. I can't really explain it, but for some reason I just felt like a strong wind could break me in half.
During those three days at home I only left the house a couple of times to go to the store with my mom. My mom told a couple people what I was doing, and they kept coming up and telling me how great it was. I felt embarrassed. I hated when my mom brought attention to it. It made me feel like I was showing off. People kept wanting to hug me while I ached from head to toe, and I can say that I was truly ready for this to be over with.
On the third day, after my injections, my mom and dad and I packed up the car and headed for Indianapolis. The big day was almost here.
This is the second of three articles about Bobby's experience as a bone marrow donor.
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