Anthony Nolan - Be a Match, Save a Life - Part 2

Last week I posted about being matched for a bone marrow/stem cell donation, which you can read HERE.


This week I wanted to provide some more detail behind the donation process, as it is a lot less stressful than public opinion would have you think.


So...

The first step is signing up to become a donor... There couldn't be a simpler process, all you do is register on the Anthony Nolan website, and they send you a test tube. You spit into the test tube and send it back to them. That's it.

Anthony Nolan will then store your sample and wait to see if it matches anyone looking for a bone marrow transplant.  This in itself is incredibly rare, so the more people on the register the better.

What happens if I'm a match?


There are now two methods of donating bone marrow, one is more widely known than the other:

• Bone Marrow Donation
• Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Donation

Bone Marrow Donation

This is the more widely known process of donating, and it involves surgery under general anaesthetic, with a 1-2 week recovery period.  This is the process that has been around for decades, but there's a newer, potentially more successful method available.

Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Donation

This is the new method, which I was put forward for.  This has all of the benefits of the bone marrow donation, but none of the intrusion.  I'll explain how - 

For the 4 days before the procedure, you get visited by a nurse (at your home or your work, when is convenient for you), and they will give you an injection of a natural substance called G-CSF.  This promotes the growth of stem cells within your blood, meaning you create more than you need.  On the 5th day you go to their hospital in London and sit there for 4-5 hours with a needle in one arm taking blood out, a needle in the other arm putting it back in.  In between is a machine that uses centrifrugal forces to separate your newly grown excess stem cells from your blood. 

The blood goes back into your arm, the stem cells get collected in a bag and transferred to the patient.

The Anthony Nolan trust suggest you have a day off work after to recover, but even that is optional!

And that's it.  No anaesthetic.  No pain.  No lasting effects.  

Potentially one saved life.

When donation is this easy, it's a wonder that the Anthony Nolan's register is so short of people.

Signing up to the register is incredibly easy, and you can do it HERE 

I don't do pleading or begging, but this is the right thing to do.  

But I can't help the person I was matched to right now, you might be able to.

Please sign up 

Thanks

Jamie

Anthony Nolan - Be a Match, Save a Life

*A couple of weeks ago I said I had some exciting news...there's now been a couple of stumbling blocks, but here's a post I wrote in anticipation of the news...*

Around 15 years ago my Dad donated bone marrow to a 10 year old boy who was suffering from Leukemia.  That boy went on to beat Leukemia, grow up, go off to uni and is now living a full and normal life somewhere in the UK.

So a few years ago when the Anthony Nolan Trust (here) showed up at Bournemouth Uni looking for new people to put on their register, I didn't have to think twice.

Fast forward 3 years and I get a phone call.

"You're a potential match for a patient, would you like to go forward for more tests?"

(Speaking to the charity, it is extremely rare that two people in the same family could both be matches for patients, so it's a pretty unique thing)

And so it was, a blood test and a few week's wait later, and it's confirmed...I'm the match they've been looking for.

Wow.

I'm currently waiting for my final medical later this week to check my body is all good, and all being well I'll be donating within two weeks....

Unfortunately this is where my story comes to a close (for now). Due to a small complication (on my side), I am currently unable to donate the stem cells.

However, I still want to outline what is involved in the donation process, because there is a lot of false information out there, and it’s actually quicker, easier, and less painful than current perceptions.

So watch out over the next couple of days as I update this blog with some more details.

Thanks

Jamie

Business as usual?

Neglect..."To disregard: a lack of attention and due care" 

Which pretty well sums up this blog. 

Fortunately, there's something quite exciting around the corner, which I want to tell you all about.

Over the next few days I'll be updating the blog with some new posts, and maybe even asking for your help with something quite important.

Catch you soon

Jamie

To unsubscribe or to not unsubscribe...do companies pay any attention?

Do you keep a track of all the companies whose emails you've unsubscribed from?

I certainly tried...5 years ago...But nowadays you buy things from so many websites, sign up to so many email lists and get so much spam, that it becomes impossible to keep track of which emails are solicited and which aren’t.

Fast forward to today...

Just before 2pm, I received an email from Moonpig telling me about their new Valentine’s Day offers...

Didn’t think anything of it, deleted it, carried on with my day.

4 hours later I received another email from Moonpig, apologising for sending me the earlier one:

The question is, had I unsubscribed? I don’t think I had!  I buy cards from Moonpig periodically and so I kind of expected to receive emails from them.  

I only realised it was a mistake when they told me they had made a mistake, and I still don’t think it was a mistake anyway!

So what do you do when you’ve realise you may have sent emails out to people you shouldn’t have...send an email to the same dataset apologising just in case? Or actually work out who shouldn’t have received the email and apologise to them instead.

Considering Moonpig’s business is purely online, this is something Moonpig should be experts at.  Handling personal data, managing CRM databases, sending useful emails etc etc...this should be their bread and butter.

But now, my impression is that they have now made a mistake...when they might not have done.

What would have been the right thing to do?

What will 2011 bring?

So 2011 is now upon us.  A Happy New Year to everyone, I hope you all had a fantastic break.

Since returning from the Christmas break, back into the real world, there’s been big talk about what the trends for 2011 are going to be, with lots of predictions being thrown around.

Initially lots of people have gone stark raving bonkers over Quora – “A continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it”.

Or as it appears to me: Yahoo Answers mixed with Wikipedia

It appears useful, but with millions of email notifications being sent through, is it going to be a victim of its own success?

The other site catching people’s attention is about.me – basically a central page where you can link out to all of your other social media pages.

This sounds handy, and could be a positive for SEO in terms of in-bound links, good for business cards and such like where there’s not much space, but you want to link to all your sites.  But do we really need another URL to link to?

It will be interesting over the course of the year to follow these sites, as well as many others that come along and try to be “the next big thing”.

Hopefully using the power of this blog I can try to document this in some small way.

I hope you have a happy and prosperous 2011.

It's been a while...

It may be a little early for New Year's resolutions, but I feel like I need one now:

I will regularly update my blog.

I will regularly update my blog.

I will regularly update my blog.

I will regularly update my blog.

I can't believe how long it's been since I've updated this...but I now have my own URL (www.JamieSpafford.com), and it's time to pick it back up again.

So if you're still here and reading this, you should look forward to some regular updates from me soon.

In the meantime, have a very merry Christmas, and an extremely happy New Year!

Thanks

Jamie

When Social Media Just Isn't Enough

My girlfriend has recently been having problems with Vodafone.

She upgraded her contract with them to an iPhone 3gS and has since had no end of troubles trying to get any signal/cellular network.

The obvious outlet for her frustration was via her Twitter feed, where her tweets were picked up by @VodafoneUK who replied to her straight away offering help by means of an email.  The email led to a reply stating they could not help her and she would need to phone.

Fast forward to today where in total there have been 9 phone calls, 1 store visit, 2 new sim cards...and still no working phone.

But every time she or I tweet about Vodafone, we receive a reply saying "Sorry to hear you're still having problems, drop us an email or contact us via the eForum".


It must be frustrating working the Twitter account for Vodafone because they seem keen to help, but they're being let down by the Customer Service call centres...there's nothing else someone on Twitter can do, they have to rely on the one-on-one contact of a phone call or store visit.

Monitoring Twitter for mentions is a fantastic Customer Service aid and really helps customers feel they are being listened to, but make sure the rest of the Customer Service department can match it for use

Rant over.