Bone Marrow Awareness Day in Bellingham

Ten of the walk's forty-five days are set aside like this one, and this one is in Bellingham: the county seat and largest city of Whatcom County, formed in 1903 when the county's four bayside towns of Whatcom, Sehome, Bellingham and Fairhaven consolidated, and now home to roughly 40 percent of the county's population. In Jeana's own words: "I stay where I am to educate about donors, transplants, how and why they should join." There is no route today and no mileage. Come and find her, ask what you actually want to know, and get a straight answer.

Most of what she covers is practical, because most of what stops people is a wrong idea about the procedure. To join the NMDP registry you need to be between 18 and 35, a resident of the US, its territories or freely associated states, and able to meet NMDP's health guidelines. The swab kit is free and usually arrives in the mail in three to seven days; you swab your cheeks at home and send it back in a prepaid envelope. Once you are on, you stay listed as a potential donor until you are 61, unless you ask to be removed. If you are ever matched, NMDP says most donors — about 90 percent — donate via peripheral, circulating blood rather than marrow, the patient's doctor chooses the method that is best for the patient, and donors should expect to spend 20 to 30 hours over four to six weeks, not counting travel.

She will also explain why it matters who joins, not just how many. Donors and patients are matched largely on genes called human leukocyte antigens, or HLA. HLA is inherited, and NMDP says some ethnic groups have more complex tissue types than others, which makes finding a close match more difficult — and that not all ethnicities are equitably represented on the registry. That means two patients with the same diagnosis can face very different searches, for reasons that have nothing to do with either of them.

One thing to be clear about: the Jada Bascom Foundation does not operate a registry, perform tissue typing, collect cells, or decide who is eligible. Nobody is swabbed, typed or enrolled on this walk, and no kit changes hands at a walk stop. Joining is something you do yourself, directly with NMDP at nmdp.org. What happens on an Awareness Day is a conversation — and then, if you decide you want to, you go home and do it.