Mark DeFrancesco Jr., 26, never expected to see adulthood. When he was a child he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and at the age of 9, chemotherapy and radiation withered his body down to around 30 pounds. He was in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant, but despite testing drives throughout his home state of Connecticut and the support of his local community, no match had been found for DeFrancesco. Then "like a miracle," he told NJJN, a matching bone marrow donor, Samuel Aronoff of Highland Park, was found.

As a fruit and vegetable farmer, Douglas Young measures his life’s work by the seasons. Since receiving a stem cell transplant for his rare blood cancer, he has been able to enjoy more harvests than he once thought possible — inspiring him to seek out the stranger responsible for saving his life. In spring 2019, Young, a 62-year-old grandfather took a break from his Woodstock, Connecticut orchards and traveled to Boston for hellos and hugs with Timothy Hahn, the New Jersey accountant whose stem cell donation put Young on the road to recovery in 2016.

A Pasco County mother facing a leukemia battle received a life-saving transplant from a stranger in California. Amber Delgado's health took an unexpected turn back in 2012, before her twins were born. "I went to the hospital with a pain on my left side. My spleen was four-times bigger than what it was supposed to be," Delgado said. "They told me that I had cancer and it was called chronic myelogenous leukemia."

What are kids to do when life spirals out of their control and bad things happen to their loved ones? Those are the questions actress Vanessa Bayer tackles in her first children’s book, "How Do You Care for a Very Sick Bear?", a heartfelt story about sickness and the friendships that help make the hard times a bit more manageable.

Note: This article is in Russian. After opening the page you should see a pop-up that asks "Translate this page?" Click on the "Translate" button to read the article in English. [translated] A descendant of people from the Grodno area searched for a marrow donor for four years, risking death. In 1994, an advertisement appeared in the Belarusian newspapers: they were looking for a donor for the American guy Jay Feinberg.

Adena Philips was 11 when the founders of the bone marrow registry organization Gift of Life came to speak at her synagogue in Toronto. Too young to join the registry herself, she started selling pens to raise money for the organization. While working as a consultant at Deloitte about 10 years later, she was approached by a friend to do a side project for a nonprofit organization. She asked which one it was and when she heard the name, she had to say yes. It was Gift of Life.