Almost there!

Hello all,

No news lately but I'd assume that all is going well. I realized yesterday that we are midway through July which means we're 8 months in and only 4 more until the 1 year mark!

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer and getting some time to relax!

More Letters!

A couple days ago, I received an email from Lee with a letter attached from my recipients sister. It was such a beautiful letter... she told me how beautiful her sister is, inside and out and how her sister is such an amazing person full of love, laughter, generosity and strength - pretty much exactly how I pictured her.

It warms my heart when I hear from them. :)

Wonderful News!

A little over a week ago I received a letter from my recipient saying that she's doing really well. She was released from the transplant facility before day 100 and actually could have gone home sooner than she did but her family was sick so they didn't want to risk it. She also said she was looking forward to meeting me and being able to hug me and thank me in person.

As everyone can imagine, I was so excited to get this letter - it truly means the world to me and I'm eagerly counting down until the 1 year mark in November :)

Connections

My recipient had been on my mind all night Saturday night. I sometimes wonder why she weighs so heavily on me at times and then think that maybe it's because she's thinking of me too and our thoughts are connecting. Days will pass and life gets busy and the donation doesn't even cross my mind but then some days I can't think of anything else and I'm amazed all over again at how blessed I am to have been able to be part of such an awesome thing. I wonder about her often and I wish I knew how she was doing. I haven't received an update so I'm going to assume that no news is good news.

Do something amazing today :)

Precious Time

Time has so quickly escaped me. I've been experiencing my own personal struggles lately and have let the stress of life grab ahold of me and bring me down.

Unfortunately, I do not have any more updates on my recipient, but I did realize that it has been more than 100 days since the donation and those were the most critical days. I hope everything is going well for her and her family. I will post an update as soon as I get one.

Engrafted Stem Cells!

I received a phone call on Friday with some news about my recipient. The stem cells have engrafted so she's making my blood cells now! She is doing well and was discharged from the hospital which is great news!

Merry Christmas!

Letters and Thankfulness

I'm currently on the west coast for some pharmacy conferences so I've been kind of out of reality for a few days and was surprised to see I had received a phone call from Lee. I listened to the voicemail and he had just wanted to check in because it has been about 30 days. He said he didn't have an update for me so my heart sank a little with disappointment but then he said he had a letter for me from my recipient! Obviously I called him back immediately and we chatted for a few minutes and he offered to email me a scanned copy of the letters (her husband wrote me one too!) and he's mailing the originals home so I can have them.

My recipient hand wrote me a letter and told me she had just gotten remarried and 24 days after she got married she was diagnosed with AML, which certainly changed their plans. Between the two of them they have 8 kids and 3 still live at home. She thanked me up and down and said that hopefully I'd meet them someday which absolutely thrilled me because I'd love nothing more but to be able to meet her and her family!

Then I read her husbands letter to me and I think I cried more through his letter because he told me what he had to watch his wife go through and that they couldn't find a donor. He said I was the only match in all of the US and Canada and if they couldn't find a match they were only going to do one more round of chemo and try some experimental medications. He told me that I saved his wife's life and I was their hero. This of course turned on the waterworks even more. I don't really feel like a hero, I really just feel honored to have been able to take part in this, but him telling me that means the world to me.

I've been really stressed out with trying to find a job after graduation and trying to figure out what I'm going to do and where I'll be within the next year and this just makes me realize how much more there is to life and what is truly important. I was able to spend Thanksgiving with my loved ones and will do the same in a few short weeks for Christmas and I couldn't be more thankful to be surrounded by people I love and by people that love me.