Organ donation and Facebook’s Life Event
After taking a personal interest in organ donation, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that organ donors can now add their organ donation status as a Facebook Life Event. Did you know that you can easily add your Be The Match Registry commitment on Facebook too? Here’s how:
Save the image below to your computer.
From your personal Facebook timeline page:
- Click Life Event in the status update window at the top of your timeline
- Select Health & Wellness
- Select Other Life Event
- Title the event Joined Be The Match Registry as a potential Marrow Donor
- Upload the Be The Match image from above (right click to save
- Insert the date you joined the registry – if you are unsure, please call us at 1-800-MARROW2
- Add the location and a line or two about your story (optional)
- For donor/patient confidentiality reasons, please don’t post your donation date if you have donated marrow or PBSC.
- Select your audience (next to the Save button) and click Save
Note: As with some personal information on Facebook, this Life Event status can be kept private or shared publicly or only with friends. In order to share this Life Event, you need to upgrade to Facebook timeline. To get started go to the Introducing Timeline page and click Get It Now. Learn more about upgrading.
College student gets in the game – Patrick’s donor story
Patrick Abdul was a leader in Wagner College football team’s “Get in the Game. Save a Life” marrow donor recruitment campaign in 2008. Their efforts added more than 200 students to the Be The Match Registry.
Two of those students have already been called as a possible
match. One of them was Patrick.
A two-year-old patient
Patrick went on to donate to a two-year-old boy with anemia. “The future for that two-year-old little boy hopefully is long and healthy,” says Patrick.
He hopes that his recipient “gets to do everything that I was able to do as a kid, with no health problems.… And grows up to play football, to be a strong guy like me,” he adds with a smile.
The chance to save a life
The chance to save a life meant a lot to Patrick. He was happy to be part of his team’s community service event adding people to the registry, but he didn’t give it much thought. When he learned he was a match, it really hit home for him that this was something real, something that mattered. He could actually be the one to save another person’s life. It was a great feeling.
The donation process
He donated peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC), which required getting shots of a drug called filgrastim for five days. The filgrastim moves more blood-forming cells into the bloodstream where they can be collected for transplant.
- To learn more about donating PBSC, watch the PBSC donation video >
“I’m not going to lie,” says Patrick. The side effects of the shots felt like getting the flu.
“So that wasn’t too pleasant. But it was only for five days, and you’re giving someone a lifetime. It was 100% worth it to me.”
Patrick is featured near the end of the new “Get in the Game” video made to inspire coaches and players to get involved in adding donors to Be The Match Registry.
Do Something Big with a video widget
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Just click the Share button and select the site you want or copy the embed code. Add the
widget to your Facebook page, your Twitter account, your blog or wherever you are active
online and spread the word about the critical need for more bone marrow donors.
Visit http://bit.ly/du4aw6 for more on the Do Something Big campaign.
Shaquille O’Neal challenges the public to step up and save a life
| Basketball superstar Shaquille O’Neal has teamed up with Be The Match® to tell the nation about the critical need for more bone marrow donors. In the Do Something BigSM campaign, the basketball superstar will challenge Americans to “Be the one to save a life.” In three new public service announcements, he challenges Americans to save a life through marrow donation. The videos hit the airwaves and the Internet this month. |
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