Anna_Mosity

That might not be trademarkable as a paint name.

Do it! I understand your mindset. My dad has an autoimmune disorder, but it's not one that can be fixed by any sort of donor :/ The existing medicines aren't so effective against it, either. I'd kicked around the idea of joining the registry for a while, but the tipping point was when I realized, "What if somebody out there could CURE my dad just by taking a week off work? How much would I be willing to give up to convince them to do that? How hard would I beg for them to help us? What if someone out there could give him his normal life back, but they just didn't feel like it or never got around to it?" Once my brain thought of it that way, I knew that I couldn't live with myself if I didn't sign up. I was so happy to learn that most donations are a lot like giving blood and only take a few hours-- and that even the more complicated surgical donations are relatively straightforward and minimally painful and nothing at all like the procedure shown on TV. By signing up, you could give somebody their life back-- give a child back to their parent, give a parent back to their child, give a person back to all of the people who love them. All you have to do is mayyyyybe take some time off work at some point in the future.

That's awesome! I've been on the registry for about 2 years now, and I get so excited about the possibility of being able to help someone in such a massive way. Last summer I was matched with a man in his 60s, but his condition deteriorated before they finished running my cells through all the tests :/ I was really sad that I was too late to help him, but the Be The Match rep I talked to on the phone said that I have a better chance of being matched with someone now that they've already done the more advanced profiling of my cells. Maybe this summer!

The Christian churches I grew up attending taught that Catholics weren't real Christians and that they were blasphemers and idol-worshippers. It's not an uncommon thing among conservative evangelical churches and is pretty much the norm for fundamentalist Protestant churches. We called the Catholics "Papists" and didn't consider them saved because they didn't know the "true God" even though theirs had the same name as ours.