Why does donating bone marrow hurt

After the surgery, you might feel tired or weak and have trouble walking for a few days. The area where the bone marrow was taken out might feel sore for a few days. You can take a pain reliever for the discomfort. You'll likely be able to get back to your normal routine within a couple of days, but it may take a couple of weeks before you feel fully recovered. The risks of this type of stem cell donation are minimal. Before the donation, you'll get injections of a medicine that increases the number of stem cells in your blood.

This medicine can cause side effects, such as bone pain, muscle aches, headache, fatigue, nausea and vomiting.

These usually disappear within a couple of days after you stop the injections. If that doesn't help, your doctor can prescribe another pain medicine for you. For the donation, you'll have a thin, plastic tube catheter placed in a vein in your arm.

If the veins in your arms are too small or have thin walls, you may need to have a catheter put in a larger vein in your neck, chest or groin. This rarely causes side effects, but complications that can occur include air trapped between your lungs and your chest wall pneumothorax , bleeding, and infection. During the donation, you might feel lightheaded or have chills, numbness or tingling around your mouth, and cramping in your hands. These will go away after the donation.

If you want to donate stem cells, you can talk to your doctor or contact the National Marrow Donor Program, a federally funded nonprofit organization that keeps a database of volunteers who are willing to donate. If you decide to donate, the process and possible risks of donating will be explained to you. You will then be asked to sign a consent form. You can choose to sign or not.

You won't be pressured to sign the form. After you agree to be a donor, you'll have a test called human leukocyte antigen HLA typing. HLAs are proteins found in most cells in your body. This test helps match donors and recipients.

A close match increases the chances that the transplant will be a success. If you sign up with a donor registry, you may or may not be matched with someone who needs a blood stem cell transplant. However, if HLA typing shows that you're a match, you'll undergo additional tests to make sure you don't have any genetic or infectious diseases that can be passed to the transplant recipient.

Your doctor will also ask about your health and your family history to make sure that donation will be safe for you. A donor registry representative may ask you to make a financial contribution to cover the cost of screening and adding you to the registry, but this is usually voluntary.

Because cells from younger donors have the best chance of success when transplanted, anyone between the ages of 18 and 44 can join the registry for free.

People ages 45 to 60 are asked to pay a fee to join; age 60 is the upper limit for donors. Common side effects of regional anesthesia are a decrease in blood pressure and a headache after the procedure.

We take all the necessary precautions to ensure the safety and well-being of the donor. To learn more, see Donor safety and support. The amount of marrow donated will not weaken your own body or immune system. The average amount of marrow and blood donated is about one quart, less if the patient is a baby or child.

This is only a fraction of your total marrow. Most donors are back to their usual routine in a few days, and your marrow naturally replaces itself within four to six weeks. The donation will be scheduled at a hospital that works with the NMDP. Peripheral blood stem cell PBSC donation is a way to collect blood-forming cells for transplantation. The same blood-forming cells sometimes called blood stem cells that can be donated from the bone marrow are also found in the circulating peripheral blood.

Before donation, a donor takes injections of a drug called filgrastim to move more blood-forming cells out of the marrow and into the bloodstream. Then the donor's blood is removed through a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells. This process is similar to donating plasma. The study is investigating whether blood-forming cells from the peripheral blood can be used as effectively as blood-forming cells from bone marrow for unrelated donor transplantation.

A clinical research study has a written set of instructions for how a donation will be carried out. It is an important scientific way to evaluate the effectiveness of the procedure for both donors and recipients. Receiving filgrastim injections: To move more blood-forming cells from your bone marrow to your bloodstream, you will receive filgrastim, a drug given by injection each day for five days before the donation. The first injection will be given at a donor center or medical clinic.

You may receive injections on days two, three and four at your place of work, your home, at a donor center or at a medical clinic. On the fifth day, you will receive your final dose of filgrastim, and then donate your blood cells at the donor center or hospital outpatient unit. Donating the cells: PBSC donation is done through a process called apheresis, which is similar to donating plasma. During apheresis, a needle will be placed into each of your arms.

Blood will be removed from a vein in one arm and passed through tubing into a blood cell separator machine. The machine collects blood-forming cells, platelets and some white blood cells.

Plasma and red blood cells are returned to your body through the other arm. All the tubing used in the machine is sterile and is used only once for your donation. If only one donation is done, it may take up to eight hours. If two donations are done on separate days, each collection will take four to six hours. Donors may experience headaches or bone and muscle pain, similar to a cold or the flu, for several days before collection. These are side effects of the filgrastim injections that disappear shortly after donation.

Other common side effects are nausea, trouble sleeping and tiredness. Less than one percent 0. The PBSC donation procedure can also have side effects. Some donors experience tingling around the mouth, fingers and toes and mild muscle cramps. This is caused by the anti-coagulant blood thinner used in the apheresis procedure. These symptoms are easily treated with calcium replacement or by slowing down the procedure. Other common side effects include bruising at the needle site, chills and a decrease in the blood platelet count.

PBSC donation may require placement of a central line if you do not have suitable arm veins. A central venous line is a sterile tube that is inserted into one of the larger veins — the femoral vein, internal jugular vein or subclavian vein. The risk of serious complications from use of a central line is small. A central line will be placed only with your consent after you have received information about the possible risks.

Another potential risk is associated with filgrastim injections. Though filgrastim is commonly used to treat cancer patients, the use of filgrastim in healthy donors is fairly new. Therefore, no data are yet available about the long-term safety. We began using filgrastim to aid in transplants in the s. Since then, no donors from the registry have reported any long-term complications from filgrastim injections.

Before the donation, you will receive five days of filgrastim injections. Before: You will be seen by a nurse practitioner or physician assistant at least two weeks before your donation to have a physical exam and blood work, and to make arrangements to receive filgrastim also known as G-CSF, a protein that causes your bone marrow to increase the production of blood stem cells.

During: Your stem cells will be collected in an outpatient setting using a procedure called apheresis. During apheresis, blood is removed through a needle from one arm or through your Hickman catheter, the stem cells are collected, and the remaining blood components that are not needed for transplant are returned through a needle in the other arm.

The collection process will take up to five to seven hours daily, usually for one or two days. You will feel tired at the end of the collection process, so we recommend that someone drive you home afterwards. If you can, it is best to take some time off from work during the time period when you will be donating.

Donors may experience headache or bone pain and muscle aches, similar to a cold or the flu, for several days before collection. These are side effects of the filgrastim also called G-CSF or Neupogen injections that disappear shortly after donation. Other common side effects are nausea, trouble sleeping and tiredness. Less than one percent of donors have an allergic reaction to filgrastim, which may include skin rashes or shortness of breath. There are some medications that cannot be taken while you receive filgrastim.

You should not drink caffeinated beverages coffee, tea, soft drinks or alcohol. You should avoid taking Pepto-Bismol or other anti-acid liquid medications. Marrow donation is done under general or spinal anesthesia so the donor experiences no pain during the collection procedure. Pain medication is commonly prescribed after marrow donation.

Discomfort and side effects vary from person to person. Common side effects of marrow donation include:. Some donors say the experience was more painful than they expected; others say it was less painful.

Some donors describe the pain as similar to achy hip bones or falling on their buttocks. Others say it feels more like a strained muscle in the back. The ache may last a few days to several weeks. You may experience side effects during the PBSC donation procedure. Some donors experience tingling around the mouth, fingers, and toes and mild muscle cramps. This is caused by the anti-coagulant blood thinner used in the apheresis procedure.

These symptoms are easily treated by slowing down the procedure or giving the donor calcium. Less common side effects of the donation procedure are a decrease in the blood platelet count, lightheadedness, and nausea. Although everyone's body responds differently to the donation process, you can expect to feel tired for a few days after the time you donate and complete the filgrastim injections. You may experience a wide range of emotions, including stress, anxiety, gratification, and even ambivalence about being a donor.

You can talk to a clinical social worker on the donor services care team about your feelings and concerns. Your generosity as a bone marrow or stem cell donor could help a patient win his or her battle with cancer. Stem cell and bone marrow transplantation provide a potential cure for patients with primary bone marrow failure or with malignancies of the bone marrow and lymph nodes, such as leukemia and lymphomas. If you are in good health, between the ages of 18 and 40, and would like to become a potential donor, please contact:.

The NMDP requires that volunteer marrow donors be between the ages of 18 and An individual must be at least 18 because donating is a voluntary procedure that may involve surgery and the donor must be able to give informed consent. A guardian or parent cannot sign a release or give consent because unrelated marrow donation is a voluntary procedure and is not beneficial or lifesaving to the donor. Because the patient's physician may request either a marrow donation procedure which is considered surgery or a blood-cell donation, a volunteer must be medically eligible for both procedures.

The NMDP recognizes that chronological age does not necessarily correlate to physiological age.