What are the odds?

According to Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide (BMDW is the continuing effort to collect the HLA phenotypes and other relevant data of volunteer stem cell donors, and is responsible for the coordination of their worldwide distribution) the current number of donors and cord blood units in the BMDW database is: 23,577,584

Participants in this database consist of 73 stem cell donor registries from 52 countries. During the early discussions with DKMS I discovered that I was the only person that matched out of all of the registered donors.

I was telling someone at church yesterday that I feel kind of strange when people say how wonderful it is what I'm doing, when I didn't really do anything special. I am not like doctors that went through years of education and training, or an athlete that spends hours a day training.... I didn't do anything in particular to make my body match this person, I just basically happened to be a lucky match! All I did was exist! 

Plane tickets and hotel reservations were taken care of today. I'm getting more excited as the donation draws closer. There was a beautiful sunset today, and it made me think of the patient, wherever they are, looking up at the same sky. They probably started the process of chemo today. I'm praying that the hope of my donation will keep them strong through the pain. I wish I could send a message to them to hang in there, that I'm doing what I can.