In November 2010, Joshua was teaching at Salisbury School, a college preparatory boarding school in Connecticut, when he joined Gift of Life’s registry as a volunteer donor. Though the details are a bit foggy after so long, Joshua remembers thinking swabbing was a good idea.
“The speaker running the drive made compelling arguments about why it was silly not to join the registry,” said Joshua. “I thought, well, you can get swabbed now and you can always make a decision later on if you ever get called.”
After nine years in Gift of Life’s registry, Joshua received a call in August 2020 to inform him he was a possible match for a patient, but he didn’t get to donate that first time. A year later, almost to the day, Joshua received a second call from Gift of Life.
“I was just chilling in my apartment a few weeks before school started, and got another call,” said Joshua. “At first I thought, ‘Is this real? They just called me last year.’ but this time it was much more specific. I matched a man in his mid-40s who was batting Acute Myeloid Leukemia, and needed a blood stem cell donation.”
“My wife and school administrators at work were very supportive,” said Joshua. “But one of my friends was worried, how could I know I wouldn’t be giving my stem cells to a bad person? I decided that even though I didn’t know anything about my recipient, I believed most people are good, and I was going with that probability. You have to trust in strangers, sometimes; my recipient certainly was.”
Joshua and his wife Amber flew to Florida for the donation, where they walked on the beach and visited downtown Delray Beach, enjoying their time together. Since the school year was on, they had to return home right away after the donation, but plan to come back to Florida in the spring to visit Disney World with their two children.
“I really want to write to my recipient, but I'm a math teacher and words are not my strength, so I’ve been thinking for a long time about what to say,” he said. “I would love to meet him someday.”
While he thinks about what to put in his letter, Joshua is also thinking about how to give others the same opportunity he’s had to help a stranger.
“I’m setting up a school swabbing event for next April when more of the seniors have turned 18 and can join the registry,” said Joshua. “My Gift of Life contact said I would want to find a student leader to help organize the event, but I already have one. When I told my students I was donating blood stem cells, one of them came up and asked what she could do to help.”
Joshua will also invite other faculty members to join the registry.
“Being a donor is not hard – you get swabbed, and though you may never be a match, if you are, you have time to think about it,” he said. “You give up a few days of time, but you are helping someone for the rest of their life, and that impacts more than one person because they have family and friends. What it comes down to is, are you going to help someone or not? What kind of person do you choose to be?”
Joshua is a 35-year-old math teacher who lives with wife Amber and their two children in Connecticut. He graduated from Wesleyan University where he was on the wrestling team. In his free time, he enjoys hanging out with his wife and kids, video games and exercising. He just finished his first marathon a week before donating and plans to do it again soon.