No countdown or cocktail says “Happy New Year” to me like the New Year’s Day Twilight Zone marathon on the Syfy channel. Instead of jumping on my resolutions to get to the gym or cut up vegetables for the week or read a nonfiction book, I spend the day bleary-eyed and lazy, curled up on the couch with a bowl of microwave popcorn.
This year was no different. My 10-year old son took this opportunity to disappear into Fortnite oblivion as I indulged in my one day, binge-watching bonanza. He emerged from his video game stupor to eat lunch, and I fed him macaroni and cheese from the microwave. It was not my finest day as a parent.
Although it wasn’t part of this year’s marathon, I thought back to an episode called “Button, Button,” which seems particularly relevant to my life at the moment. In the episode, a man and a woman receive a mysterious box with a button on top it. A stranger visits and gives them the key to the box, explaining that if they press the button then two things will happen: they will receive $200,000 and someone who they don’t know will die.
The couple is torn: they desperately need the money, but they don’t want to cause someone’s death. One night, after her husband goes to bed, the woman sits at the kitchen table transfixed by the button. Finally, she decides to push it.
The next day, the stranger returns and takes back the box, giving the shocked couple a briefcase with their money. The wife asks what will happen to the box and the man ominously replies that the button will be “reprogrammed” and offered to someone else “whom you don’t even know.”
Chills. Those guys are toast.
But it got me thinking about strangers and the things we do for people we don’t even know. Right now, my family dwells in a particularly vulnerable moment, potentially needing something big from a stranger.
Last May, we were thrust into our own parallel universe when our previously healthy and robust son was suddenly diagnosed with a rare blood disorder, dependent on weekly blood and platelet transfusions. While we have tried other first-line treatments, they haven’t worked so far. Now, this same boy whose survival skills are challenged “virtually” for hours in our basement every weekend may face the reality of a bone marrow transplant in the next few months.
We are worried. One of the biggest factors of the success of a bone marrow transplant is a high percentage match with a donor. (Click here for a good explanation of this: How Patients and Donors are Matched). A recipient’s best bet for a perfect 100% match is a full biological sibling, although even they only fully match 25% of the time.
But our son doesn’t have a full sibling. So if he needs a transplant, we will have to rely on an “unrelated donor match,” in other words, “someone who we don’t even know.”
I think about the couple in the Twilight Zone and how easy it was for them to press that button of doom since they would never see or know the people who would bear the consequence of their choice. They only had to think about what was right in front of them–a pile of cash– without really imagining who their choice might be hurting.
Yet I am counting on people I don’t even know to apply that same logic and flip it. Instead of pressing a button that would hurt someone, I am praying that they will click on a link to help someone, either my son or one of the thousands of people who need new stem cells or bone marrow to save their lives from cancer or other life-threatening diseases.
We all have these “buttons” to press every day of our lives. We can choose to help or to hurt people probably a hundred times a day, people we know and people we don’t know.
To be fair, donating your bone marrow is a little bit more complicated. It can take a temporary toll on your body and there are always a million reasons why the timing isn’t optimal: your kids have activities; you can’t take the time off from work or school; you are nervous about the pain it may cause; you are planning a big vacation. But if it was for someone you loved, you probably wouldn’t think twice.
So I’m here to implore you to do it anyway, knowing that it is for someone who is loved, even if it’s not by you.
Do it for my son or kids like my son, even though you may never have seen how adorable they are when they are cracking up at the Simpsons or how earnest they are when trying to figure out a new puzzle or how seriously they take researching roller coasters on YouTube.
Do it for me or moms like me, whose hearts ache when we look at our kids who have already missed out on summers at sleep-away camp and baseball seasons and too many days from school.
Do it because no matter who receives your bone marrow, a universe of people will be grateful for it: parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, and friends–all people you don’t even know, but who are so eternally grateful for you and the great gift you’ve given.
It’s easy. You press this button right here and register online. http://join.bethematch.org/matchEM
Be the Match (a godsend organization) will send you a swab kit. You swipe at your cheek, send it back, and poof! you’re on the registry, poised to save a life. Chances are slim that you will be called (about one in 430), but if you are, I hope you will grab the opportunity. It is said that “whoever saves a life saves an entire world.” Coming from the mom of a kid who may need you, I thank you in advance for saving my entire world.
Learn more about bone marrow donation. Join me at our Be the Match Donor Registry Drive on Sunday, January 13 at Temple Beth El in Stamford, CT.
