When I remember, and get in a routine of making follow on appointments, I give blood. My last donation brought me past the 10-pint mark and as the next congratulations point is 25, my competitive streak instantly started itching.

As part of being a blood donor, one is persistently invited to be on the bone marrow register. Clearly, one can say no. However, having seen several hospital dramas where a little bit of bone marrow would have been helpful, I chose to put my name down. After all, what are the chances of being singled out?

To be honest, when I got a letter saying I was a potential match, I didn’t think a great deal about it. Given that I’ve been on the register a couple of years, the main thing I thought was “that didn’t take long” follow by “they must send these out all the time”. The first step was an invitation to go for a blood test.

I work in a major central Manchester hospital, just over the road from the regional blood donation HQ, so I arranged to have the blood drawn there. When you go to give blood, generally everyone you deal with thanks you for giving up your time and stresses what a kind thing it is that you’re doing. Multiply that by 2 and you’re getting close to the rate of thanking I had from Darren who carried out the detailed but still very slightly unclear instructions about what to do. I asked if they had much to do with the bone marrow donation process there, and he said that they’d tested one other person but hadn’t heard anything more about it. I promised to let them know the outcome of this process, at least.

Blood duly drawn, I went back to work and carried on without giving the process much thought… After all, they will be testing loads of people, probably, and so one of those other thousands will be “the one”.