Melbourne Jelly – Bone Marrow Edition

@superamit

Jelly is on Friday October 21st @ Inspire9.  You should come along and help save @superamit!

First, a little history. Amit Gupta started Jelly way back in New York. He and a bunch of his freelancing mates were kicking back coworking one day, and were having so much fun they decided to do it more regularly. The name ‘Jelly’ was given because in the middle of the table they were working from was a jar of Jelly Beans, and the rest is history.

The Melbourne contingent started shortly after, and today it’s evolved into a thriving coworking community that meet every second Friday.  Inspire9 has been heavily involved in the organising of Jelly and we believe it provides a great opportunity for folks looking for a more casual coworking environment to give it a try.  What Amit started in New York is now a staple of the Melbourne coworking community.

That’s why we were sad to hear that recently Amit was diagnosed with cancer.  He has been quick to seek treatment and after undergoing a couple of weeks of chemotherapy he’s now needing a bone marrow transplant.  Now, despite there being 9.5 million donors on the bone marrow donors list the chance of Amit finding a match is around 1 in 20,000.  That’s where you come in.

Amit has kicked off an internet community campaign to help find bone marrow donors that would be a match for a transplant.  People from all over the world are taking a simple bone marrow swab test to register their bone marrow type, and increase the chances of finding Amit a match.  Specifically Amit is need a donor of South Asian decent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka).

So, we’re having a bone marrow edition of Jelly during which we’re hoping to get as many people as possible to register as potential bone marrow donors and help Amit and other people in his position.

A simple bone marrow test in the States is as simple as swabbing the inside of your cheek for a sample, and then sending it through to the Bone Marrow Donors Association. In Australia we don’t have the technology to quickly process cheek swabs, so the bone marrow donor test involves a blood test.  We’re looking into sticking with the cheek swabs simply because it would be less invasive for a Jelly.  We’re also looking into what’s involved in modernising the process in Australia so that it’s as simple as it is elsewhere.

You don’t have to take a bone marrow sample test to come along – it would be great just to show your support and help raise awareness around the issue.

So, if you’re interested sign up here and we’ll see you at the event!

If you happen to be in New York you can head along to the Brown Bones party to show your support.
You can read more on Amit’s story here and here.

UPDATE

We’ve done a lot of research over the last two weeks into how bone marrow donor testing happens in Australia and we’ve got some pretty disappointing results.

In America and other places, to find out if you’re a match to donate bone marrow it’s simply a matter of taking a cheek swab test and posting that back to a lab to be processed.  Unfortunately we don’t have the technology in our labs in Australia to do this, and so the procedure is to have a Tissue Typing blood test.  We looked into having the swab tests mailed across from the States so we could send them back with data, however apparently the US won’t process our tests without an American citizen to go along with it.  So we’re stuck taking blood tests.

The local Bone Marrow Donor Association have a mobile van that comes out to donor drives to take these tests, however they only do this once a month and are currently booked until April 2012.  Richie organised a private pathology company to come out and take the tissue typing tests for us for a fee, only to be told today by the Bone Marrow Association that it’s not possible for these tests to put people onto the donor list, and the tests would be discarded.

So, after dozens of phone calls, hours of time, meters of whiteboard brainstorming, and lots of head banging we’ve finally conceded that the best option is to drive people down to the local blood bank to have the tests.

We’ve booked in some spots just after lunch time so if you’re willing to provide a blood test to become a bone marrow donor please tweet us to let us know and we’ll make sure you’ve got a spot.

So, just to be clear we won’t be able to do any swab tests Friday.  We’d still love to see you here to show your support for Amit and to raise awareness around cancer research.  We’ll also be raising money for a swab machine so if you’d like to lower the bar in becoming a bone marrow donor then please throw in some cash.

I’m really sorry we weren’t able to do the swab thing and I hope to still see you come down for this special Jelly.  See you Friday!

- Nathan