Hi everyone, 

This month as a part of the 'Marroween' Campaign I'll be getting a real tattoo the Marrow logo to raise funds and awareness for Anthony Nolan on behalf of Sheffield Marrow. 

Sheffield Marrow is a part of the network of lifesaving students who work with the blood cancer charity, Anthony Nolan. There are over 50 Marrow groups, with hundreds of student volunteers (like us!) in universities across the country, who are all working towards one thing - saving the lives of people with blood cancer.

Every 14 minutes someone in the UK is diagnosed with blood cancer. For someone with blood cancer, a stem cell transplant could be their last chance of survival. At Anthony Nolan, we match incredible people willing to donate their stem cells, to people with blood cancer who are in desperate need of a lifesaving transplant. Marrow now recruit one in four people who go on to donate stem cells, which means hundreds of lives are potentially saved by Marrow's incredible work. 

It costs £40 to add each potential lifesaver to the stem cell register. Every penny and every pound that Sheffield Marrow raises will help to continue saving the lives of people with blood cancer.

Donating your stem cells isn't a scary thing to do! When you sign up to the stem cell register you have a 1 in 100 chance of being a match with someone who needs a lifesaving transplant - so it's pretty unlikely if you did sign up that anyone would ever need your stem cells, but if they do you could potentially save their life. 

In 90% of cases stem cell donation is very similar to blood donation, and in the other 10% you have a small procedure under general anaesthetic where they're taken out of your pelvis, but you're asleep so you don't feel it and although you wake up a little sore and groggy there are no long term health consequences to donating your stem cells!  

Thank you so much for reading this and please consider donating to this amazing charity! And if you're aged between 16-30 and want to sign up please paste this link into your browser! www. anthonynolan.org/Sheffieldmarrow