The Gift

We in the states just celebrated Thanksgiving, a time of  reflection on the things we are grateful for and with the approaching holiday it is a time that signifies hope. 

I, Sweet William The Scot, went to my post office box and found I had gotten an envelope from Wally & Sammy & Ella all the way from South Africa by way of Sweden.  My this envelope was racking up the milage.

 Inside I found the 2012 Sunflower Fund Bandana. The tag says Thank you for being prepared to "SHARE A LITTLE, to SAVE A LIFE".  Become a bone marrow stem cell donor.  South Africa has eleven official languages and the word HOPE is written in those languages on the bandana.  They raise money through this bandana to give hope to those needing a bone marrow transplant.

 In the United States  we have The National Marrow Donor Program a nonprofit organization founded 1986. 

 The Match registry is one of many registries of unrelated donors and cord blood units in the world. Most large, developed nations have such registries. Large registries of unrelated donors are needed because only about 30% of patients with diseases treatable with hematopoietic cell transplantation can find a suitable  donor among their family members.

The remaining 70% require an unrelated hematopoietic cell donor as a transplant source. Because the odds that two random individuals are HLA matched exceeds 1 in 20,000, a registry's success depends on a large number of volunteer donors.  Those donors give us HOPE.

They sent me the bandana because their Grampy and my Lee have the same health issue, their marrow produces large amounts of an abnormal protein. WM is  rare about 1,500 new cases occur annually in the United States.  My Lee if she needed a bone marrow transplant has no family at all and she would have to rely on the registry totally.

 

Two bloggers one in Johannesburg and one in Cincinnati found out they were connected by a rare disorder and the one in Johannesburg sent us a bandana of HOPE.

 

Thank you Sammy & Wally & Ella for The Gift. 

 

They also sent me a fridge Magnet that says South Africa.

Hope ~ English

iThemba ~ Zulu

Hoop ~ Afrikaans

Holofela ~ Sepedi

Fhulufhelo ~ Venda

Tshepo ~ Setswana & Sesotho

HOPE

 

Signing Off

Sweet William The Scot