The One Post About 'The Good Fight' Everyone Should Read

By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 14, 2022 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 14, 2022 |

I’ve wanted to write about this for a while, but I was waiting for the right pop-culture opportunity, and hell if The Good Fight didn’t provide it this week. Stick with me here, OK.


This week’s episode centered on one case. The 11-year-old nephew of a partner, Ri’Chard (played by Andre Braugher), is about to go in for a life-saving bone marrow transplant. On the morning the transplant is scheduled, the donor pulls out. Ri’Chard calls an emergency meeting with the firm, and they all work together to find a solution. It entails several emergency motions, some investigative work, and ultimately, a lot of donor swapping. The kid gets his BMT and presumably lives happily ever after.

Of course, none of this could have been accomplished if 1) the kid didn’t have a very powerful uncle with a large law firm at his disposal, and 2) it wasn’t a completely fictional television show. It’s a phenomenal episode that changes the dynamics at the firm, which had previously been contentious, but it has very little basis in reality. In real life, this situation doesn’t end with one of the firm’s associates agreeing to donate an egg in order to facilitate the bone-marrow donation. In real life, the 11-year-old kid dies.

For those who don’t know yet, my son underwent a bone marrow transplant last year. We were lucky that his siblings were donor matches. In truth, if they hadn’t been matches, we would have probably found one. He’s a white kid, and from what we were told, there is, like, a 94 percent chance we’d find a match in the registry. That is not true for people of other races, and it’s especially not true for people of mixed race.

And that is why I’d like to try and convince anyone who is reading to register in the bone marrow registry. LISTEN: It is ridiculously simple, idiot-proof, and completely painless. You click here, you answer a few quick medical questions, and they mail you a kit. You swab your cheek, you put the swabs back in an envelope, and you drop it in the mailbox. THAT’S IT. It’s easier (and less invasive) than a COVID test. It takes less than five minutes. Easy peasy, and you get, like, 1 million Good Place points.

OK, but what if you match, right? Well, first of all, the odds of that are fairly slim, but also: If you do, you get to save someone’s life. Literally. SOMEONE WILL LIVE BECAUSE YOU STUCK A SWAB IN YOUR MOUTH FOR 15 SECONDS. How amazing is that? It’s cheaper and more impactful than that $20 donation you made to ActBlue last week.

Maybe you’re asking, “Does it hurt to give bone marrow?” Listen: My nine-year-old child did it, and they were happy to do it. They would do it again (hopefully, they will never have to do it again). On the morning of the transplant, they went to the hospital, they were put under, the doctors extracted the necessary marrow, and left two small needle holes in their back that quickly healed. They spent one day in the hospital eating all the ice cream they could order while playing with an iPad, went home the next morning, and they were basically back to normal by the next day. The recipient’s health insurance pays for the whole thing (in this case, that was our health insurance). I think the worst that happened was that they couldn’t swim for a week. That was it.

It’s a piece of cake, and in exchange, YOU GET TO SAVE A LIFE. It’s so easy. I can’t encourage you enough to register. Go here. Tell all your friends, and if those friends are under the age of 40, people of color, and/or mixed race, tell them twice.

Fun Aside: Though it will make you a goddamn hero for simply existing and making your marrow available to a stranger, we try not to play up the “hero” thing in our house. My son has identical twin siblings. They were both matches, and ultimately, we chose the sibling who weighed slightly more. But let me tell you: The other sibling was crestfallen. Cried nonstop for hours, and remained upset about it for weeks because she wanted to be the one who saved her brother’s life. She was inconsolable. She probably cried as much as our son did when he found out he had cancer. It’s a sensitive subject in our house. I get it. Who doesn’t want to save another person’s life?

You could do it. You won’t even have to fight with your sibling over it. Just register here. It’s simple, it’s fast, and it could be the most important thing you ever do for someone else.