A Request to Donate Hematopoietic Stem Cells

For a while now, my diary has gone almost entirely onto Instagram. More than any other reason, it was largely because Instagram was more accessible, and writing on a blog like this is far less accessible. It's also partly because I have a strong feeling that on a blog I want to write longer pieces, and once I start touching the blog there are so many pieces I'd endlessly want to rewrite, so I haven't written, but the 'request to donate hematopoietic stem cells' that I was contacted about yesterday was, among the contacts I've received recently, one that made me think a lot, so in the end I'm writing.

Hematopoietic stem cell donation is what's commonly called donating bone marrow. That is, for most leukemia patients, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is recommended as one of the nearly last-resort options, and that's what it referred to. Last spring, when I stopped by Myeongdong Cathedral, I'd signed up to donate hematopoietic stem cells, and now that I'm being contacted this year, it feels newly remarkable. The email said that a man in his teens had made this request due to leukemia.

Just thoughts passed through me in a stream - the thought that I'm healthy, memories of my teenage self living without a care, never going to the hospital, playing Sudden Attack, going to PC rooms, occasionally going to the library, doing student council activities, getting by without trouble; the thought that I'm healthy now; the thought that the friend's parents must be having a really hard time; thoughts wondering how I could be of help when the friend must be suffering so much.

For now, I got in touch again this morning and said that I have an exam right now so I can't do anything until the 25th, but I think once that's over I should contact them again. I hope that if someone willing to do it appears before then, it can be resolved first through those people. Because surely time is of the essence. But if not - if no one does it and it comes back to me - I really want to help. It seems like a meaningful experience, that I too could save a person.

Is this what life is like..