Curt, in memoriam
My college friend and all-around good guy, Curt Rettke, died yesterday afternoon at around 5 o'clock after an intense, year-long battle with leukemia. Curt was hopeful and valiant to the end and when I saw him in September, he seemed fearless while knowing all along that his odds were less than really bad. He died of the same form of leukemia that killed my Aunt Jane about seven years ago: Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. Curt was born on August 27th, 1962, and was way too young to die.
But, the real reason that I am writing is that I am SO FUCKING PISSED OFF right now. Curt asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society or to the National Bone Marrow database. I went to the NBM site and found that among the ways to help are to donate your newborn's cord blood to a national cord blood bank. And the reason that I am ANGRY beyond belief is that, when Kevin and I decided not to bank Jack's blood for our own use, we wanted to donate it and were told by the obstetrician that that wasn't possible. I remember her almost laughing at my naivete: how could there possibly be a national registry for cord blood? AND THERE IS. I could have had Jack make a donation, a gift, an irreplacable, invaluable gift at his birth and now I can't go back and do what I didn't do. What I CAN do is ask all of you to implore your pregnant friends to consider making this gift and going to www.marrow.org to find out how to do it.
It is rare, so rare to truly have an opportunity to make this kind of a difference. Do it. I so wish I had.
Curt, this is for you.
5:22:43 PM 
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