DONOR STORIES/VIDEOS

Ken

Thomas

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Kristeen

A Gift of Life - My Experience Donating Bone Marrow.
This past holiday season, I donated bone marrow for a seventeen year old boy with Leukemia. I was blessed to be given the chance to help him and potentially stop him from dying.

It's a wonderful irony that I should be contacted to donate, as from '06 to '07 I worked at A3M (Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches, affiliated with the National Marrow Donor Program) as the South Asian Outreach and Recruitment Coordinator. In '06, I got hired and the first thing I did was register. In September of 2010 I was contacted by A3M and told I was a match. The recipient is the same age as my nephew, and I knew I would want to save my nephew, so of course I wanted the same for this boy. It feels appropriate that as a match, I am connecting everyone who has been in this fight to save patients’ lives. As a donor it feels like yes, we are doing it, and yes we are life savers.

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Steve

When the blood tests confirmed a match, I felt, in a way, that I had won the lotto.  Yes, I was on the donor end, but here I was presented with an opportunity that, unfortunately at present time, defied the odds.  I’m not a religious man, but I do recognize the miraculous aligning of both circumstances and biological makeup when two people are successfully matched.

There was some soreness for a couple of days, but besides that, I had no problems. What was practically just a minor inconvenience to a day in my life made it possible for a young boy to live.