Alice and her bucket list

Hi everyone,

Have you ever heard of a bucket list? It's a list of things you want to do before you die – or as one well-used expression says, kick the bucket. 

A bucket list reminds us that we shouldn't put off doing the things we want to do, because one day, we won't be here anymore to do them.

I very much hope for anyone reading this that that day is a long way off. When we're young and healthy, it always seems that way. But for anyone who is sick and dying, it's obviously a different story. That might be why people around the world are responding to one 15-year-old girl in England and her bucket list. 

Alice Pyne has been battling cancer for four years now. Her cancer is terminal, which means, as she writes on her blog, "It doesn't look like I'm going to win this one." She started her blog just a couple of weeks ago, and it quickly went viral.

Alice has lots of very normal sounding things on her list – to swim with sharks, to enter her dog in a dog show, to go to Kenya, to meet Take That (which she did just last weekend). But at the top of her list is one very important wish, and it's not just for herself. She wants everyone to sign up to be a bone marrow donor. 

For many cancer patients and for people with certain other diseases, bone marrow donors make the difference between life and death. But it's hard to find the right donors, and for this reason, bone marrow registries need as many people as possible to sign up. You generally have to be 18 to enter yourself in the registry. But whether you're 18 yet or not, it's not too early to learn about it, or to talk to your family and friends about it.

Who knows? Maybe Alice's biggest dream will come true.

Peace,
Carrie

To find out more about bone marrow donation:
Deutsche Knochenmarkspenderdatei
Stammzellspende (Austria)
Stiftung zur Förderung der Knochenmarktransplation (Switzerland)