John: Goooood morning, Hank. It's Tues– there he is. He's been here the whole time.

Hank: When I made my Pizzamas video, I said I'll see you tomorrow.

John: Yes.

Hank: And it was actually true!

John: Yeah, here we are. We're in San Diego together, and I get to stick this up my nose.

Hank: So, John, as you know, about 80% of your cells are red blood cells.

John: Oh, yeah.

Hank: And then a further 5 or so are other kinds of blood cells.

John: I can feel it all coursing through my veins right now.

Hank: Literally. And that's wild. And that's made by your bone marrow, which is part of the organ  of your bone.

John: Don't tell me that the bone is an organ, I don't like it. I don't like that each of my  individual bones is an individual organ. I dislike it greatly.

John: Bone marrow–

Hank: Is very important.

John: –It's extremely important.

Hank: Because all that blood has to be created constantly. So it's constantly dividing really,  really fast. And if something goes wrong with that, then you get a blood cancer.

John: Yeah.

Hank: You get leukemia pac- spec- Pacifically.

John: But you got a blood– Pacifically?

Hank: Pacifically! Of the Pacific.

John: Uh, you got a blood cancer that isn't leukemia. You got one called lymphoma.

Hank: Yeah. Which is, it can end up in the bone marrow. It can end up colonizing the  bone marrow, but it starts outside of the bone marrow.

John: Okay.

Hank: So if I relapse, I will probably have to get what's called an autologous stem cell  transplant, where they take my bone marrow out, clean it up to make sure that it doesn't  have any cancer cells in it, kill all the bone marrow in my body, and then put my  bone marrow back in me, in which case, I would not be needing a donor. I would be  my own donor.

John: Right. We're rooting against that.

Hank: Very much so.

John: When you talk about your cancer,–

Hank: Uh-huh?

John: –sometimes you talk about it in the present tense, and sometimes you talk about  it in the past tense. And then when you talk about it in the past tense, you often catch  yourself. You say, like, oh, like, when I had cancer–or, HAVE cancer.

Hank: That's the thing. It's not either, because I'm in remission. So, like, there is,  we just can't know for sure whether or not there are still cancer cells in my body.

John: But isn't that true for everyone?

Hank: Yeah, but it's a high enough percentage chance…

John: That you don't feel comfortable situating it in the past tense.

Hank: That medically, they don't, they say I'm in remission, not that I'm cured.

John: When can we put this baby in the past tense?

Hank: 60 months.

John: Anyway, that's not what this video is about. This video is about me sticking this up my nose.

Hank: Because in a lot of blood cancers,  you can't get your own bone marrow back. You need to get somebody else's.

John: Yes.

Hank: And we need a very large registry of people. Not your nose, by the way.

John: What?

Hank: It's not like a COVID test. They just need cells.

John: Okay.

Hank: You gotta swab the inside of your cheeks.

John: Oh, they get them from my cheeks!

Hank: Which, honestly, I'll be honest with you,  we already did. So you're  not gonna see it happening.

John: We already did this, actually. Uh, we filmed an entire video, but it was out of focus. And so  we're re-filming the video because the message is important and it's worth being in focus for.

Hank: Yeah.

John: So the joke about sticking it up my nose was from the first video when I thought I had  to stick it up my nose, but it turns out I don't. And then we're just gonna put it into this thing–

Hank: Yeah, it's very easy.

John: –and then send it off. It's so easy!

Hank: And you can sign up to get one at dkms.org.

John: And it's free.

Hank: It's free. They send it to you. You can be a member of the registry. And the reason why this  is important is because, for many people who have to get a donor transplant of bone marrow–

John: Right.

Hank: –they need a very close match. Otherwise,  the bone marrow, which produces your white blood cells, might think, and often does think,  that the body they are  inside of is to be attacked.

John: An enemy body.

Hank: And it's called Graft-versus-host Disease.

John: Yeah.

Hank: So the broader group of potential donors we have, the better it is, because it isn't like a  binary thing, you’re a donor or you’re not–

John: And I wasn't on this list.

Hank: No, he wasn't.

John: Because– I should have been. But I haven't taken the time to go to dkms.org–

Hank: And you just click a button and you fill out some information–

John: Fill out my basic information and then get my test and then swab my cheek.  And we're hoping that we can inspire lots of new people to do this through the magic  of Nerdfighteria, because it's a game changer. If you are a close match for someone,  by the way, you might still think that they drill into your bone marrow–

Hank: Right, this is important.

John: Yeah.

Hank: They used to, like, drill into your hip and just like, pull out a bunch of–

John: Extract a bunch of bone marrow.

Hank: It takes a long time. It's very painful. But now they don't do that anymore.

John: Yeah.

Hank: For the most part, you get an injection that causes your bone marrow cells to leave  your bone and enter your blood. Yeah, it's wild. And then–

John: You just get a lot of new bone marrow.

Hank: –after you get a few of those injections, you go in, they take blood  out of your body, run it through a machine that extracts the stem cells, *extremely accurate stem cell extraction sounds*

John: I'm imagining what it sounds like.

Hank: It's probably not that different from that. *extremely accurate stem cell extraction sounds*

John: And then it takes the bone marrow cells out, and that's what it uses.

Hank: And then it puts your blood back into you.

John: It's easy.

Hank: It's easy!

John: It's doable.

Hank: Yup!

John: It's free.

Hank: Uh-huh.

John: And I did it. I did it. And then we're just going to send it off and it's done.

Hank: And he's a pretty anxious guy.

John: I am. But I was kind of. I have to say, the swabbing of my cheek actually calmed  me down because I felt like I was removing some of the bacteria from my body alongside  some of my cells.

Hank: I'm sure you were.

John: So it's a win-win.

Hank: I can’t, I'm not able.

John: Hank can't do it because he had the cancer.

Hank: Yeah. So they don't want my bone marrow, it could have problems.

John: So if nothing else, do it because Hank can't do it.

Hank: Yeah, but if you can't do it, you can give DKMS a little bit of money.

John: So they can send these letters.

John: What else are we gonna talk about today? There is a pirate ship.

Hank: Um… *gasp* Jesus!

John: Pirate ship out there. That is. What did they say in The Goonies?

Hank: Holy Mary, mother of God, or something like that. It's a pirate ship!

John: It's a proper pirate ship.

John: Hank.

Hank: Yes?

John: I will see you on Friday, but also, in the interim, currently.