Part of me hates how every day has to be the "World Day for ____".
Personally, I would like to think that we didn't need Time to Talk Day on Thursday to make it acceptable to talk about mental health. I would love it if we had no need of that. That's not me being all naive and idealistic and wishing that mental health problems didn't exist (time spent on that exercise would be fruitless at best) but instead I would like to see a world where we don't have to be reminded that people have their own issues, they have their own demons that they are fighting with and actually just being nice to other people can make a difference. When I say being nice, I do mean actively being nice, but it's not that hard. Most of us think that we're being nice when we don't tell Sally at the office (name chosen at random: not an actual person I work with) that the new dress that she loves so much makes her butt look humongous and not in a good way. That's not nice, that's just having a filter. Nice would be telling Sally that her hair looks great (if it does: lying does not count as being nice).
Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. I'm not confessing to being an A-hole because I told hypothetical Sally that the dress looks AWESOME on her and she should totally wear it when she goes out with Bill from Finance (yes, I have worked in a place where there was a Bill who worked in Finance, but no, this is not him, and yes, I did find Bill working in Finance hilarious).
The reason I am confessing to being an A-hole is that I kind of forgot that it was world cancer day today and I was originally going to write something about that, and again, I forgot.
I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned it on here before (probably have: I never pass up an opportunity to save something about it!!) but one of my biggest achievements last year was getting over my fear of needles enough to be able to go and give blood. Three times.
On the walls of the Manchester donor center are comments from donors about why we do what we do. There is also an anonymous wall where people can add stories of those who have received life-saving blood transfusions and a lot have thanks from that person and their family since, without the people to go into that donor center and give their blood and their platelets, doctors would lose so many tools from their arsenal to fight for every single life.
One of the other things I did was join the DKMS register and updated my details with the organ donor register.
Now, I'm not saying this to be all bragging rights or whatever. The only reason I'm saying it now, and every time I open my mouth to say it, is because I want to emphasise that you don't need to run a marathon, you don't need to set up a direct debit to all the charities you want to support (I would be completely broke if I did that!) With these charities or causes, you just put your name on the list. Okay, so you might need to do a cheek swab or spit into a test tub thing for them to gather the DNA data that they need from you, you might need to have a needle placed gently (trust me, blood donor nurses are the most gentle vampires you have ever met) into your arm for about ten minutes, but every time I get a text to say that my blood has been dispatched to a hospital I am proud.
I don't know if it's going to the new mum having to have a crash C-section to save her and her baby, to someone with severe anemia or if it's going to a cancer patient who can't make their own red blood cells because of their disease. In a way, it doesn't matter because they need it.
Charities like DKMS and Anthony Nolan may never need to contact you after you joined their register. They may never actually need to ask you for anything, but they also might. I know that if one of my family members needed someone from one of those charities (or the multitude of others out there) they would be ready to do everything that they could; they do it day in day out. These charities are amazing, so if I know that I would want them to do everything that they could for me and mine, I feel like I have to at least state my willingness to do the same for someone else.
Blood, stem cells, bone marrow; these are all things that money cannot buy, so whilst I know that it is important to make sure that Cancer Research UK (and other charities) can keep ploughing as much money as possible into finding a cure for one of the most devastating diseases on the planet, remember that you don't need to have the money to be able to help.
Just think about it - that is all I ask.
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