Catholic | cherish each moment, even the ones that suck.

I just had a couple former Sojo colleagues over for dinner. One of them, Jen, had signed up for the bone marrow registry after I urged everyone I knew to do so, and now, though they need some more tests to be sure, it looks like she’s actually been matched and asked to donate.

This totally flabbergasts me. All she knows about the potential donee is that he’s a 30-year-old male overseas with MDS, and that she might well save his life. If he has MDS that young, he might have a history really similar to mine–getting MDS as a result of earlier chemo, which could well have been for Hodgkin’s lymphoma (since this is one of the cancers that strikes younger folks).

Only, unlike me, I guess he doesn’t have a parent or sibling who’s eligible to donate.

Between writing the line above and this one, I’ve just been staring at the screen blankly and tearing up.

I’m SO proud of Jen, and her awesome Catholic employer which let her take a day off for testing right after she started working there, and of all donors. They are amazing, and if you are between 18 and 44 and not a cancer survivor yourself, you should go sign up for the registry right now and get your cheek swab kit mailed to you. Most people never get asked to donate, but if you do, you could save a life.

If Jen’s donation does go through it sounds like odds are she’d be asked for stem cells (the pretty low-impact process I described here), but it might be actual marrow (where they go into your hip bone to take 1-5% of your bone marrow, as they did for my sister who donated to me, and which can take several weeks to fully recover from–thanks again, sis!)

Either way, this is literally awesome, in the sense of inspiring awe.

Today is the first day of the “O Antiphons,” which, during the last seven days of Advent, are traditionally said or sung before the Magnificat in vespers (evening prayer). Growing up Protestant, I learned them in the form of the great Christmas hymn “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” which is a paraphrase.

So, because Advent is for the immunocompromised too, I’ll be posting the verses relevant to each day, along with a note of where the 20-second mark is (for those of us who need to wash our hands for 20 seconds each and every time, and are sick of singing “Happy Birthday”).

However, the 20-second mark varies a bit based not only on how fast you sing it, but whether you are using, as I usually have, the tune’s Protestant version, which has a longer note at the end of each line (i.e. at “high,” “mightily,” “show,” and “go” in this verse). Catholics, I’ve noticed, tend to use what I presume is the original full-strength plainsong where you just plain sing every single note the exact same length, except maybe the very end of the chorus.

O come thou Wisdom from on high
Who orderest all things mightily
To us the path of knowledge show
And teach us in her ways to go. [Protestants rinse]
Rejoice! Rejoice! [Catholics rinse]
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Whichever side of the Tiber you’re on, happy last week of Advent!

cherish each moment, even the ones that suck.

thoughts about surviving cancer. also, other things.

Tag Archives: Catholic

Wow.

Handwashing to the O Antiphons: Wisdom