First off big props to you for doing it. I'm officially a fan of yours.

My wife had it done about 8 years ago. She was in a good deal of pain for at least a week. It probably would have been less but she only took the pain meds if it was unbearable (she is stubborn patient and decided she was going to be tough). On the ride home every expansion joint or bump I hit on the highway was cause for cursing and being told how bad of a driver I am. I don't remember the approximate amount of days she was laid up but I'd say the 20 day estimate is pretty accurate. The first week or two I wouldn't expect to be able to do much except complain about your spouses driving if you're my wife). I'll talk to her tonight and see if she remembers in more detail than I do and report back if it's relevant.

How is she now? Any lasting effects, or all good after ~3 weeks?

---

Your favorite mafia sucks.

I donated bone marrow a few years back. I was on the Be the Match list for non familial donors. I had general anesthesia and I'll echo what was said before, the drive home is awful. But the next day I was on my indoor trainer lightly pedalling. I got very tired fairly quickly for about 2 or so weeks. I feel I was back to normal by a month or so. There is so much that goes into donation for a non family member including lots of tests, 2 units of autologous blood transfusion, etc. Good luck and feel free to reach out if you have any other questions.

Yeah this is from Be The Match.

The drive home thing is kinda a bummer, considering the facility where they want to do this is about 3+ hours away. Maybe I can just stay an extra day or grab a hotel or something. I've got over a month to figure out logistics.

---

Your favorite mafia sucks.

Zero lasting effects with the exception of a few small marks that look like freckles on her back. She says she would do it again in a heartbeat. She is a crossfitter said she went back to working out after 2 weeks but couldn't do much of anything heavy-ish. After 3 she was good to go.

My wife echos the being tired part. She said it was because her iron was so low.

I know nothing about this, but good on you for doing it.
Please update us later with your experience.

---

maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Also how much karma do I get for this? Can I park like an asshole for the rest of my life, or just a year? Do I still have to recycle?

---

Your favorite mafia sucks.

You can now start conversations with "I'm a bone marrow donor, an ironman, vegan, I drive an electric car, and my dog is a rescue" (choose what applies)

---

maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

All I need to do now is figure out where the tattoo goes and I'm set.

---

Your favorite mafia sucks.

Update and timeline for future reference:

19 June 2009
Signed up for bone marrow registry.
6 June 2013
Got an email from them asking me to confirm all my contact info is up to date.
7 March 2019
Got a call from them saying I'm possibly a match. Asked me if I'm still interested in donating. Asked me to go get some bloodwork done to confirm I'm a match. Tell me there's like a 90% chance I'll just need to donate stem cells and not have bone marrow extracted. Stem cells means I go on medication for a couple weeks to boost my stem cell count, then I donate some blood and it's over. Bone marrow means I go under general anesthesia and they extract the marrow from my pelvis and possibly my femurs.
8 March 2019
Get the blood work done. Drew about 4 vials of blood. I've been told I have great veins. Told I'll probably hear something in 60 days.
12 March 2019
Get a call saying I'm the match and that the doctor of the patient thinks bone marrow, not stem cells, is the best course of action. Asks if I'm still on board. Sure.
A few days later
Go do more blood work, a full physical, and an EKG
A week after that
Am told the EKG was abnormal. I figure it's for my very low resting heart rate (low 40s, but can get into high 30s if I chill out, the way I was when I was waiting for them to hook me up to the EKG machine).
9 April 2019
TrainerRoad ramp test. Big gain in my FTP (but there are a lot of changes since my last test. Different trainer, different power meter, different bike). I start Sweet Spot Base II Mid Volume.
10 April 2019
Get another EKG done
A week after that
Call the people and say "yo, I was told I had an abnormal EKG, I got a second one done, and I haven't heard anything. I'm on a fairly structured training plan. Do I need to stop exercising? Is my heart going to explode?" Am told I have a very low resting heart rate (duh) and that a team of three doctors have reviewed all my tests, including my two EKGs, and I'm good to go. Am told surgery date is set for May 6th.
20 April 2019
70 mile gravel grinder. Felt good. Executed the race exactly how I hoped. Wasn't fast, but finished strong yet tired. Legs and lungs felt great at the end. Palms were sore the next day. Perfect weather.
A few days later
More blood work. And a chest x-ray.
5 May 2019
Get on a plane to fly to the city where the hospital is. My sister flies in from New Orleans to go with me. She's an RN. My wife would go but we have two kids and juggling that would be difficult. I can't eat after midnight and my procedure is at 3:00pm the following day. We get pretty drunk and see End Game. I fall asleep with my eyes open. We stumble out after the movie and I scarf down street food at midnight, then we go back to our hotel and crash.
6 May 2019
Donation day! No breakfast for me. I take a shower and then scrub myself down with anti-microbial wipes. I'm the cleanest I've ever been in my life. Uber to the hospital, check in, get into a gown, IV hooked up, O2/pulsometer attached, and then I have to tell every healthcare professional "yes, your equipment is working. Yes, my heart rate is at 39. Yes, that's normal for me". I'm wheeled back to the OR and I hit start on my phone's stopwatch. Drugs flow and I'm out. I wake up with no pain at the incision site (still kinda numb). My throat is a bit sore from being intubated while under, and my neck/jaw hurts (my sister says this is from them grabbing me by my jaw and sliding me up the table while I'm passed out, so my airway fully opens). I'm told they harvest 1.6 liters of bone marrow. I'm not even sure how that's possible. After about 20 minutes of being awake I say I'm ready to go back to the hotel. I check the timer on my phone and it's at a little over 3 hours. My sister then tells me I've been awake for almost 2 hours. So there's about 2 hours of missing time where I'm "awake" and have no memory of that time at all. Total black hole. I'm a little bit nauseous from the anesthesia so they give me a ton of barf bags. I will distribute these to my Uber/Lyft drivers over the next two days. We're back to the hotel in about 5 minutes where I crawl in bed. We order sushi and I devour it. I stay up late watching TV and then fall asleep.
7 May 2019
Wake up, grab brunch with my sister, start day drinking. I'm now looking forward to a full week off work. They cut through your lower back muscles to get to your pelvis, and the incision sites are a little tender. It feels like I've strained my lower back a bit, and I have two small bandages on my back, around where a tramp stamp would be. I'm able to walk around just fine. Uber to the airport and more drinking in an airport bar. Life is good. I get home a few hours later and I crash on the couch and start playing Red Dead Redemption 2. This is the plan for the next solid week, which I perfectly execute.

For the next week I'm told I'll feel very fatigued, which I do, but then I'm also staying up until 4am every night playing this fucking game and watching movies. A day later I'm motivated enough to do some light housework, which kinda aggravates my lower back a little. The incision sites only hurt if something bumps into them. I was given 800mg ibuprofen and also hydrocodone. I never had to take the hydrocodone, and I only needed maybe half a dozen of the ibuprofen.

14 May 2019
Back on the bike. TrainerRoad ramp test. FTP value is 2.4% lower than a few weeks ago. So you can either say I didn't really lose any fitness, or I lost whatever fitness I had gained in the past few weeks since the previous test. The main thing is that I'm back on the bike, which was a major concern I had. I was really scared that a solid week of being a couch potato would completely derail me, since I have a history of inconsistency, and a setback like this one is the perfect excuse to just completely abandon my training. I step on the scale and find that my weight didn't change from last week (I normally weigh every day but my scale batteries died).
15 May 2019
Rode Fletcher (TSS=64) on TrainerRoad. It should have been really easy but felt moderately difficult. I'm fatigued for sure. The Garmin recovery feature tells me I need 42 hours to recover. I don't put a lot of stock in that, but I do think it's a good relative number, and that's about the highest it's ever been for any workout I've done.

We'll see if I can complete the rest of this week's workouts, but so far it's looking good. I feel fine when not on the bike, and just a little tired when I'm riding. I have a fairly hard workout planned today (Stromlo +3, TSS=111) and I might be able to finish it at 100%, or I might have to drop the intensity a little. Either way, the important thing is that I'm motivated to do it. Every time I was asked by friends or family how they could help with my recovery, I told them to hound my ass if I didn't have a good excuse to not be riding in two weeks. I'm riding in one, so that's a win.

If you get a chance as an adult to have surgery at a children's hospital, do it. You're treated like royalty.

So yeah. Hopefully this answers any questions someone might have. I don't know anything about the recipient other than they have Hodgkins Lymphoma. Just because the procedure was done in a children's hospital doesn't mean the recipient is a child (I think). Apparently if we both consent we can be put in touch with each other 12 months from now, so the ball's in their court. I had my wisdom teeth removed a couple years ago and the pain and post-anesthesia nausea was waaaaaay worse than this. This was nothing.

Nitty gritty: I'm not compensated for any of this. They paid for mine and my sister's plane tickets and our hotel room. I had to pay for everything else (meals, Uber/Lyft, incidentals, etc) and I can submit receipts to be reimbursed (but not for alcohol, which is probably like 60% of our expenses). I didn't pay for any of the blood work, the physicals, the EKG, the chest x-ray, etc. I took a solid week off work just because I could, but honestly I could have been at work the following day if I absolutely had to. I was expecting this to be a lot worse than it was.

---

Your favorite mafia sucks.

Why are you assuming he's not a crossfiter?

---

<The Dew Abides>

Thanks for the update and timeline.

I just signed up for the registry a few months ago, and it's good to know the recovery isn't that bad.

Kudos!

Update update: rode the trainer last night. 90 minutes planned, 5x8min intervals at 102% FTP. First interval felt really hard. Dropped intensity by 10% and I only got about a minute into the second interval when my legs just quit. Done.

Safe to say I'm pretty fatigued. I feel fine doing normal daily activities, but riding at/above threshold is just too much right now. Am going to take the day off.

---

Your favorite mafia sucks.

Nice write-up, and glad you are feeling like yourself again. Serious kudos to you for donating, it's an amazing, selfless gift you are providing someone else in need. If we ever race together the beers are on me!

---

the world's still turning? >>>>>>> the world's still turning

You can ignore global warming. How's that?

---

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot