Vlad is feeling very good and has had a remarkable result from his stem cell transplant. He has no signs of GvHD to date and all his checkups show he still has 100% donor blood running through his veins. We don't like to tempt fate by bragging about it, so we'll leave it at that. :)
He celebrates two birthdays every year now. One in March, the day he was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and one on Dec. 15, the day of his stem cell transplant in 2009 in Houston. His immune system rebooted that day and he subsequently took all the shots and vaccinations babies do. He's almost 54, and a little over 2 years old.
I write today because we have learned the identity of a very special person, Vlad's donor, the guy who gave some stem cells to save a stranger's life. A representative of the New York Blood Center, who works with the National Marrow Donor Program, gave us his name. He's a 30-something pediatrician in Connecticut and today we're working out what to say to him. How do you properly thank a complete stranger who saved your whole world?
We're planning to meet him in person in New York at the end of March at a "Party for Life" dinner sponsored by the Marrow Foundation and the American Cancer Society. We couldn't be more excited.
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