Yesterday, we had a brave seven year old kid donating hematopoietic stem cells to his nine year old elder brother who is sick with a bad acute myeloid leukemia (AML). This is a situation where only he has a better chance of saving his brother’s life due to a 10/10 HLA match. This is what you call as a matched sibling donor (MSD). Since the amount of blood which could be lost during the stem cell procedure in the stem cell collection machine is more than what’s acceptable from young child, we had to prime the machine and kit with donor blood.
I had no words when I saw the young child come up and face the very tedious procedure with the courage of a lion and mental strength of a fortress. These situations will stand the test of time. We hope and pray things will be fine for the brothers and the family. God bless everyone who is going thru some difficult times in their lives. You have to fight some bad days to see the better ones