My friend Stan sent me the following email about his friend's brother-in-law to be:
My friend and colleague Brian has asked me to get the word out regarding bone marrow drives in the Boston area this weekend. All you need to do is "get swabbed and save a life." If you do not live in the area but know someone who does, please let them know about this. There are drives also in NYC and other areas. Please see teamhaupt.org for more details.From Brian:
My future brother-in-law, Jonathan Haupt, was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer, in March, 2009. He is in urgent need of a bone marrow transplant to save his life and there are currently NO matches on the worldwide registry. We are hosting three bone marrow drives in the Boston area that I encourage you to attend and to bring your friends and family to:
Worcester, MA:
Sunday, July 12 from 11AM to 3PM
Worcester JCC; 633 Salisbury St.; Worcester, MA 01609
Natick, MA:
Saturday, July 18 from 11AM to 3PM
Belkin Lookout Farm; 89 Pleasant St. South; South Natick, MA 01760
Boston, MA:
Sunday, July 19th from 10am to 4pm
Holiday Inn Brookline; 1200 Beacon St.; Brookline, MA 02446
The chances of finding a match for Jonathan are 1 in 30,000, so I urge you to please send this email along with the attached flyer to everyone you know and ask them to send it to everyone they know (colleagues, friends, and family) to encourage them to register as a bone marrow donor! We have drives going on in Boston, NYC, Northern VA, Baltimore, Albany, Worcester, and St. Louis (if you would like more details and flyers to send to your friends and family please let me know). Also, for those unable to attend a local drive, they can order a kit online free of charge at: http://www.dkmsamericas.org/marrow-donor-form .
Jonathan is of European Jewish descent and his best chance of a match is with someone of similar heritage, but we ask anyone and everyone to come out and register. The greater the turn-out at the drives, the better chance we have at finding Jonathan a perfect match or helping someone else like him.
There is absolutely no need to be a hospital inpatient for a donation. There are 2 methods hospitals use. 70% of the time donors are asked to do the method requiring 5 days of protean shots (1 at a clinic, and 4 done by a nurse sent to your home or place of work) and then a blood donation. This method may cause joint aches for 1 to 7 days similar to those felt with the flu. The other method, used 30% of the time (usually to save a child) requires a local anesthetic in your posterior and a hollow needle to extract bone marrow from the hip. This method is known to cause posterior pains similar to falling hard on ice.
To find out more about Jonathan and his battle with leukemia, please visit our website www.teamhaupt.org. If you are on Facebook, please join the group Team Haupt to see updates on the drives throughout the country, spread the word about the drives, and to leave your well-wishes to Jonathan.
With my sincere and deepest gratitude,Brian J. Hoffman
Powers of social media, I call upon you. The world is a very, very small place. Being halfway around the world happens these days in only a matter of hours. Information travels faster. Social media sites like Facebook allow us to fully explore our "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon."
How to save a life? Take action. What if you were the one who was able to save this life? Would you knowingly walk away? If you knew this person, would you still be ambivalent? What if it were you who needed the transplant?






