My brother and I are very different.
Our birthdays are far apart, I June 9 and him December 9.
If the year were a wheel we would be two opposite spokes.
He is a professional compromiser. I am slave to principle.
Idealist at the limits of Utopia... that's me.
Concrete thinker, feet firmly planted on ground.... that's him.
We have often disagreed, especially when younger.
Our viewpoints have always been distant.
However....
The exams were clear: we are 100% compatible. We have many things in common!
My brother, without hesitation, donated me his bone marrow.
He did as though it was the most normal of gestures, to be taken for granted.
As though it was like... tying his shoelaces.
My brother suffered after the explant.
A week of great back pain mitigated only by morphine.
But, in answer to my messages, he always responded: "I'm fine. They'll send me home soon. You just concentrate on getting better."
Two large bags of bloody bone marrow: two liters of "No big deal”, “No problem" and "I love you."
A part of my brother has taken the place of a part of me.
We will continue to disagree, but now that I have a part of him inside, I push myself to see his version of things...
My sister is similar me. Our birthdays are just 5 days apart.
She's stubborn and nervous, but has a big heart.
When she heard that her bone marrow was not compatible, I thought that she would be disappointed.
Instead she was angry!
She wanted to be the one to do what was so necessary and so symbolic.
...
Exactly one year passed since the day of the transplant and that night the entire family gathered for a celebration dinner.
Just before the toast, I glanced rapidly around the table.
On every face I saw there were memories, one on top of the other.
Admission to the hospital, the first tests, the surgical masks and socks, the doctor visits,
the hands waving when I was carried away, the bed being shoved, toward still another TAC.
The hundreds of text messages with the news of the day, the little gifts for nurses on Christmas Day.
My clothes put in sterile bags in the hospital Transplant Unity.
The arrival in my room of the first big bag of bone marrow blood...
And then: the return home, followed by the long days, exhausted, energy-less, on the sofa.
The endless waits for controls at the Day Hospital.
The removal of the venous catheter from my chest and finally being able to take a shower!
Then, again, another slow recovery: days of nausea, pains in my legs, getting behind the steering wheel to drive once more, the first hours back at work, discovering the taste of foods again, taking the stairs two by two...
One year after the transplant, I owed everything I had the strength to do, to those who now were silently and proudly staring at me.
In that moment of silence I realized that each one of them was a donor.
They gave bone marrow, certainly, but also: trust, hope , strength, patience, faith, comfort, spirit of sacrifice, resistance.
A wealth of values which embrace my new bone marrow and fortify it.
Then... we rose our glasses... and celebrated life!
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