About 24 hours after blood work began on that Friday, we learned Nick’s platelet count was almost nonexistent, his white blood cells were extremely high and that the deep purple spots was something called petechiae – a sign of internal bleeding. We were told to go to the emergency room immediately and to likely expect a blood transfusion once we arrived. What we did not expect once there was that all signs pointed to leukemia and we’d quickly be getting transferred to a different hospital (where we’d wind up staying for 22 days).

Since then, we’ve learned a ton.

During that first week and what felt like the longest six days of our life we learned not only was leukemia our umbrella diagnosis, but more specifically it was a subgroup of T-ALL known as ETP (which in actual words is Early T-cell Precursor Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia), a typically pediatric blood cancer of the body’s T-cells that is uncommon to have as an adult.

We learned it is rare and aggressive, but most of all that it is curable.

We learned a bone marrow transplant from a healthy stranger would be needed and that nowadays the procedure is a pretty painless one, much like donating/receiving blood. We learned because blood cancer patients cannot make their own healthy blood they need a frequent supply of donated blood product transfusions until the time of the transplant. We learned the (extreme) night sweats experienced for the previous couple of weeks is sort of a red flag for cancer. And perhaps some of the least helpful but more random and interesting things we learned is that after receiving a bone marrow transplant your blood type can change and you can come out of it sporting a completely different color and type of hair.

Among the other thousands of things we have learned that run the gamut, we learned – or perhaps more accurately confirmed – that we have an amazing support system of wonderful and loving humans.

These are some of the many reasons we made this site and are so happy you’ve found it. Many of our misconceptions in the world of life-saving donations have been (and no doubt will continue to be) corrected and we wanted to pass it on. Never having been in this position before, many needs have been made known to us for the first time ever and we’re determined to do something to help others beyond ourselves. There has been an overwhelming outpouring of support, with everyone offering words of encouragement and asking how you can help us. By combining our knowledge and position in this new world with your caring and generosity, working together we can make a concerted effort to cure cancer around the world.