Patient Stories

  • When Laila was just nine months old, doctors diagnosed her with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). After chemotherapy, it became clear that Laila required a bone marrow transplant during the holiday season of 2018. “Laila had to be away from [...]

  • In October 2018, Ericha Williams noticed that her young daughter, Addyson, was sleeping an unusually large amount. She also began to notice unexplained bruises on her daughter's body. After a few days of doctor's appointments and blood work in [...]

  • Just a month before her high school graduation, Hala Shaath was diagnosed with Severe Aplastic Anemia. “Instead of preparing for finals, graduation, and college applications like everyone else,” Hala said, “I was worrying about my treatment and transplant.” Hala [...]

  • When DannyRan Matthews goes to the beach, you might just mistake him for a fish. His mom can hardly coax him out of the water. From the first early-morning moment when he climbs out of his tent on the [...]

  • Stage four Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma interrupted Jailyne’s senior year of high school. Suddenly, in addition to a life full of classes, band practices, and preparing for college, Jailyne was forced to endure pokes, prods, and acute illness. Jailyne missed so [...]

  • In May of 2017, senior in high school Nick Garrett crossed the stage at Searcy High School in Searcy, Arkansas. Robe flowing and cap donned, Nick, surrounded by similarly dressed classmates, received his diploma in the high school auditorium. [...]

  • After 8 months of tests, life-threatening sickness and searching for answers, a 10- month-old named Kate was diagnosed with Congential Amegakaryocytic Thrombctopenia (CAMT), an extremely rare form of bone marrow failure. During Kate’s treatment and transplant, her mother, Lindsay, [...]

  • “Our story started at seven days old with long nights and days,” said Patsy Garza. Those seven first days of life belong to her niece, Jazzalyn, who was born with a disorder called Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID). Seven remains an [...]

  • When Colten Collier was just nine months old, a doctor discovered that his platelet count was abnormally low. It would take over three years to uncover the reason why. In all the world, just 100 or so other people [...]

  • The body fascinates Briana. As a junior Applied Movement Science major at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), Briana took classes like “Theory of Human Performance” and “Applied Biomechanics of Human Movement.” She conditioned her body through weightlifting [...]