The Donor Revealed!

So very exciting this week to receive email and a picture of Ron's donor from Sweden!! It feels like the circle is completed with having this information. It might be my imagination, but I think there is a resemblance of him at age 50 (now) and Ron when he was 50. Amazingly, when Stefan registered in the Tobias Registry of Sweden, he was a college student over 25 years ago. Perhaps you remember that Ron had no matches in the United States, so the world registry was searched for a match. There were 3. One was considered "too old", one was not available, and Stefan immediately agreed to be Ron's donor. To harvest stem cells from the blood, a series of injections are given over a period of days to boost the number of cells. Stefan had a procedure to harvest these cells, and the infusion was flown from Sweden to Detroit, then traveled to the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. The transplant infusion looked very much like a blood transfusion does. We are so grateful that Stefan joined the registry and then agreed to be a donor without hesitation.