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Hank Steals John's Cells

2024-10-08 · explainer · John, Hank · 5:44 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Health (also: Personal life) · mode: Advocacy & fundraising · tags: civic or action cta, fundraising ask, guest or collab, on location, heavy topic

Together in San Diego, Hank explains how bone marrow makes blood and how blood cancers and donor transplants work, talks with John about being in remission from lymphoma, and the brothers ask viewers to join the DKMS bone marrow donor registry with a free cheek-swab kit, as John does on camera.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting from San Diego; Hank says most of John's cells are red blood cells

  • ★ Hank notes that his Pizzamas video ended with 'I'll see you tomorrow' and this time it was literally true, since the brothers are together. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Pizzamas
  • ★★ John says the brothers are together in San Diego. — 00:00:00 · Hank Green
  • ★★ Hank tells John that about 80% of his cells are red blood cells and about 5% more are other kinds of blood cells. — 00:00:00

00:00:31 — Bone marrow makes blood; leukemia and lymphoma; Hank's own-marrow transplant if he relapses

  • ★★ Hank says blood is made by the bone marrow, part of the bone, which counts as an organ. — 00:00:31
  • ★ John says he greatly dislikes the idea that each of his bones is an individual organ. (playful) — 00:00:31
  • ★★ Hank says bone marrow must make blood constantly, dividing very fast, and when that goes wrong the result is a blood cancer, specifically leukemia. — 00:00:31
  • ★★ Hank says his blood cancer, lymphoma, is not leukemia: it can end up colonizing the bone marrow but starts outside it. — 00:01:00
  • ★★★ Hank says if he relapses he will probably need an autologous stem cell transplant, his own marrow cleaned of cancer and put back, so he would need no donor. (hedged) — 00:01:00

00:01:30 — Present or past tense: Hank's remission is not a cure

  • ★★ John observes that Hank talks about his cancer sometimes in the present tense and sometimes in the past, often catching himself. — 00:01:30 · Hank Green
  • ★★★ Hank says his cancer is neither past nor present: he is in remission, and nobody can know for sure whether cancer cells remain in his body. — 00:01:30

00:01:59 — The bone marrow donor registry: cheek swab, DKMS.org, close matching and graft-versus-host disease, modern donation, John swabs, Hank can't donate

  • ★★ Hank says that medically the chance of remaining cancer is high enough that doctors say he is in remission, not that he is cured. — 00:01:59
  • ★★ Hank: Asked by John when his cancer can go in the past tense, Hank answers: after 60 months. — 00:01:59
  • ★★★ Hank says in many blood cancers patients cannot get their own marrow back and need someone else's, so a very large registry of people is needed. — 00:01:59
  • ★★ Hank tells John the registry sample is not a nose swab like a covid test: it only needs cells, taken by swabbing the inside of the cheeks. — 00:02:28
  • ★ John says they had already filmed the whole swab video, but it was out of focus, so they re-filmed it because the message is important. — 00:02:28
  • ★★★ Hank tells viewers they can sign up at DKMS.org for a free kit that is mailed to them and become a member of the registry. — 00:02:57
  • ★★★ Hank says donor marrow recipients need a very close match, otherwise the marrow, which makes white blood cells, often attacks the body: graft-versus-host disease. — 00:02:57
  • ★★ Hank says the broader the group of potential donors the better, because matching is not a binary thing. — 00:03:27
  • ★★ John admits he was not on the registry though he should have been; he had not taken the time to go to DKMS.org. — 00:03:27
  • ★★ John says they hope to inspire many new people to join the registry through Nerdfighteria. — 00:03:27 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★★ Hank says donation used to mean drilling into the hip to extract marrow, which took a long time and was very painful, but that is no longer done. — 00:03:56
  • ★★★ Hank says that now, for the most part, a donor gets injections that make bone marrow cells leave the bone and enter the blood. — 00:03:56
  • ★★ Hank says the donor's blood is then run through a machine that extracts the stem cells. — 00:04:25
  • ★★ John, whom Hank calls a pretty anxious guy, agrees but says swabbing his cheek calmed him down, as if he were removing some bacteria along with his cells. (playful) — 00:04:25
  • ★★ John says he has done the cheek swab and they will just send it off. — 00:04:25
  • ★★ Hank says that because he had cancer, the registry does not want his bone marrow. — 00:05:03
  • ★★★ John asks viewers, if for no other reason, to join the registry because Hank cannot. — 00:05:03 · Hank Green
  • ★★ Hank says people who cannot join the registry can give DKMS a little money instead. — 00:05:03

00:05:29 — A pirate ship, a Goonies line and the sign-off

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description calls this a video about the importance and ease of joining the bone marrow donor registry and says Nerdfighteria can expand the registry together. — video description · Nerdfighteria

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: bone marrow · DKMS · hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation

Also: Projects: Pizzamas

Works: The Goonies

Rituals: See you tomorrow

Concepts: autologous stem-cell transplantation · graft-versus-host disease · leukemia · lymphoma · red blood cell · remission

Places: Pacific Ocean (“of the Pacific”) · San Diego

Also centred on bone marrow: We Stole a Man's Blood

Also centred on DKMS: We Stole a Man's Blood

Also centred on hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation: We Stole a Man's Blood

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