From the road

The Jada Bascom Foundation exists because a man in Germany joined a donor register at a drive one afternoon, more than a year before the baby he would go on to save had even been born.

Jada was one month old when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Nobody in her family was a match. That is the ordinary case rather than the unlucky one — only about a quarter of patients find their match at home, and the rest are searching a list of strangers. Jada was seven months old when she was transplanted with marrow from Torsten Huber, who had never heard her name when he said yes.

Steps to Marrow 5 is forty-five days of asking other people to be that stranger. It starts at Fred Hutch in Seattle, where marrow transplantation was worked out, goes north into British Columbia, crosses to Vancouver Island, comes back over the Strait of Juan de Fuca and turns south for the Washington State Capitol. Ten of those days are Bone Marrow Awareness Days, when Jeana Moore does not walk anywhere at all — she stands in one place and answers whatever anyone wants to ask her.

There are three things you can do without getting up. If you are 18 to 35 in the United States, or 17 to 35 in Canada, you can join the registry that serves you: it is a form and a cheek swab, and most people who join are never called. If you are outside that range, you can give, because the Foundation runs on it. And you can send this to one person who is inside it — which costs nothing, and is how very nearly every name on the list got there.