Stem Cell Donation Log #1

0. There isn't much, but thinking it might help, I'm leaving this writing. Of course the trend of the times is said to be YouTube, but the truth is writing is still more comfortable for me. So I'll organize, however briefly, how I came to do this stem cell donation, what the method is, and so on. I sincerely hope it helps those who read this later.

1. Stem cell donation is, put simply, bone-marrow donation. Why did I come to do it? Well, there's no special reason. I happened to see a place where you could donate stem cells, and I just donated that day. When was that day? Roughly... spring of 2016. Spring of 2016 was when I'd come back from finishing my life in England. What kind of person was I then? Truly a bright, energetic person. As for what happened before I left England — if you dig through this blog there are things where I organized my life in England, so I think you'll understand if you read them. In any case, at that time I was beginning to think about a life of 'contributing' to people. So, not long after coming to Korea, while I was wandering, unable to forget an ex-girlfriend from long before, I went to Myeongdong Cathedral to sort out my heart, and in the basement of that cathedral there was a stem cell donation center, so I donated.

2. Donating isn't hard. You just fill out a donation-signature kind of form, have blood drawn, and that's it. The blood submitted that way must have traveled around somewhere in the stem cell bank. Along with some stored genetic information. Several years passed with that genetic information kept on file.

3. My first contact was when I was an exam candidate — probably 2017? or 2018 — one day a message came, and I replied, 'Since I'm an exam candidate, I'd definitely like to do it after November,' but then it went completely silent. No reply came. So I still remember those several days when no contact came. I felt as if I'd taken someone's life. Normally, when taking the lives of creatures like ants, grasshoppers, cockroaches, or mosquitoes, I felt nothing, but worrying about a person I hadn't even seen is... a bit funny, isn't it.

4. After that — after the lingering thought of having said I couldn't do it because of the exam — all I could do was resolve that next time I'd do it without such an excuse, and recently contact began to come. It came on August 1, 2022...