Be the Match
I know. I know. I was supposed to write about Volunteer Vacations today like I promised. I will get to it next month, but I was inspired on Monday to write about something else. That’s when I was watching Good Morning America and heard the plea from Sam Champion for people to join the Be the Match Registry. It struck me because I had just joined and gotten my membership card in the mail a couple of weeks ago. He was asking because Robin Roberts, one of the show’s anchors, has contracted MDS, short for myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare blood disorder that affects the bone marrow. Roberts is a breast cancer survivor. I admire her for all she’s been through and she is one of the lucky 30 percent that have a sibling with an appropriate match for bone marrow. But 70 percent of the time, a sibling’s marrow does not match. That means thousands of patients with leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cell and other life-threatening dis...