The Noble Cause

You might not be blessed to help people out of their misery/pain/troubles always but you can always do your bit. First time in life I made an attempt to help someone whom I have never known before and that too in most unusual way. This is going to be looooonnnng post.

One fine evening while returning from office I received a call where someone asked me if I had a particular blood group. Since I was driving I asked the person to call me back after sometime. When I got the call second time I realized it was attempt by an uncle to save his new born nephew. I decided without a moment I would help him out in whatever way I could. The kid was in a hospital in Gwalior and was born premature, 7 months and have been hospitalized for the last one month and needed blood(a component and not whole blood) which is kind of rare and I have the same blood group. Hence I packed and left home right in the night so that I could be there next morning, though my parents were apprehensive but they couldn’t say anything as the cause was noble.

Let me give you a brief I am regular blood donor and one of my ex teammates Jaydeep Gupta had introduced me to www.friends2support.org approx 1.5 yrs back. Ever since I have joined the corporate world(close to 6yrs back) I knew my blood group to be A2+ as it was reported in pre-joining medical tests which major MNCs do for all their employees. For most of the world life is simpler with A,B, AB and O blood groups and RH factors as + or -. Now some of might be wondering what is A2+, but don’t be surprised if I tell you more than half the docs I have met don’t even know much about it and 90% of the clinics and institutes I have visited don’t even have facility to test it. It might sound even funnier with most lab technicians I met told me there is nothing as such and someone is trying to mislead me :-). Let me kill technical details and get to the story.

I start of for Gwalior which is about an overnight journey without a reserved ticket, but happened to get one just time at the station on current booking window(last ticket on 2^nd AC) which was closing. Hence the journey starts on happy note and I reach without any problems. I was picked up the station by the anxious father at 5 o’clock morning. We reach the hospital and wait for doctors to arrive. Blood banks are completely different entity and hospitals have tie ups with them. And finally we reach the blood bank and usual testing starts. And I am in for a biggest surprise of my life, the blood group is A1+ and not A2+. I just couldn’t digest it all and ask the guy to test it again and he confirms again that its A1 and not A2. It would be understatement to say I was embarrassed, disappointed and what not. I talked with the father and we decide we will get it second opinion. And the hunt starts to find a second lab which could cross verify the result. I just couldn’t imagine how would the parents be feeling as all hopes they had for last 3 days was that their kid would finally get 30ml of component today.

We went to every lab in city and figured out none of them had the tests to verify and most of them stated that there is no such group. By late afternoon we were able to find the second place which could verify it. The tests came negative again but the good news was we figured out that the tests for A1 and A2 is never done till asked and hence there is no donor list with such classification. So we started getting the everyone who had A+ to be tested for A1 and A2. To cut story short it was tested for about 100+ people till now and none of them had A2. Since I could not do anything more, I visited the hosts place had lunch and left back for Gurgaon. I had made up my mind soon after that I will put a post so that people get to know how a small effort from them can help save somebody’s precious life. I returned last night but was so disappointed I didn’t feel like doing anything. I just got a call from kid’s father and got to know that by using synthetic method the kid was given the components from another blood and has reacted positively to the treatment, which lifted my mood. All the kid need was 30ml and generally we donated one unit(350-450ml). You never know when you small effort could help save someone life.

A humble request please register on www.friends2support.org
and here is link which might provide the purpose to do your bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viO9IAqHeIY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhoPEUXFcT4&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPHRvbEQuiE&feature=relmfu

The Connect

Woohoo I just managed to make my post count to 5 after 5 yrs not bad, I am improving :-). Well I will start this post by wonderful status update I read on social networking site:

25-26 is not a nice age for a man....your ex-gfs are getting married, Your career has just started, Elders treat you as unproven theorems, College guys feel that you are too old to have in their group... You seem to enjoy both cartoon and news. You can no longer eat whatever you wish without putting on weight. You look like an ape if you don’t shave daily. You are not invited for weekend cricket matches. Every Aunt you meet asks “Shaadi kab kar rahe ho beta!!” while uncles-> “Career ka kya socha hai beta…”.. When the reality is that you are just riding the wave and going with the flow… You have all the confidence in the world but little achievements to show, You already have the first hand experience of the life , You know that whatever you have been taught about the world in schools has been sheer waste of time. You can be denied a job even after passing the test and you could be given a job if you know someone placed high enough… Politics till now was a dirty word but now you feel it everywhere. You know now love is not that blind and that friendship has its terms and conditions. .You know there is nothing for granted and free lunches are not free… Your overconfidence is now making way for a humble conscience...You now know it is not exactly what you thought it would be… :)

Though I seem to have topped the age-group by additional couple of years, I can eat whatever I wish without putting any additional ounce and I still do get invited to weekend cricket matches :-) but all others statements connect straightaway.

Courtesy the additional years the pressure is exponentially more on getting hitched and I still feel it isn’t the right time. Moreover you need to have a girl as well to get hitched as well and I seem to be doing pretty bad in that department too. My latest crush announced she got engazed even before I could ask her out or think something. But that’s the way life is :-).

Just happened to return from whirlwind trip of beautiful city Bangalore but it felt completely different from how I had seen it 2 years back. The time I had moved out, it was just a temporary stint and I was bound to back, but things do change and they change fast when you don’t want it and when you really want it change somehow the time just stops(theory of relativity ;-)). It was memorable trip as I ended up winning 2 IPods and getting to know some more cool people. Maybe it was just too short a trip but I never felt at home the way I used to before.

Time to closeup and head to bed, since I am supposed to get up early and resume my half marathon practice which I have been missing for 2 weeks now. I hardly have time, about 25 days before my second half marathon where the aim this year is to improve my time and without any cramps or sprain and not to forget the noble cause I am running(more in next update).

Cheers