I know about blood donation - what does Bone Marrow donation involve?
Done that twice now (anonymous donor), via two different methods.
First was done through a series of (self-administered
) injections with something called C-GSF or G-CSF or something like that. It's a medicine very closely related to EPO, the cycling drug. It enhances the growth of certain types of cells in the bone marrow, who then make its way into the blood stream. After about five days of injections (four a day) there's sufficient cells in your blood stream to centrifuge it out. This involves an eight-hour session hooked up to a centrifuge. Big needle in one arm, blood is sucked out, passed through the centrifuge and whatever they don't need is injected back into the other arm.
With this method the side effect is that you feel like you've got the flu for a weekend and in fact the underlying mechanism relies partly on your bodies natural reaction to the flu. And since you can't bend your one arm for eight hours during the centrifuge session, it gets pretty stiff. Other than that, there are no side effects. I was not affected much by the flu-like symptoms but in retrospect I would not want to have gone flying that weekend. (I did not have a license by then.)
The second was done through a series of injections in my hip bone, where they simply sucked the bone marrow out directly. As this was not just one but a series of 10 or so injections, and injections like this cannot be handled through a local anaesthetic, it was done under full narcosis. In the process they also removed about 1300ml of blood, which is a lot. (A normal blood donation is 500ml.) Afterwards, I felt sore (but not terribly so) at the place where they went through the skin. I also felt weak for a week or two afterwards due to the blood loss. And the narcosis is a no-flight indicator for 24 hours: I checked with the local aviation medical department.