Lejos estaba Leticia de imaginar que a sus 50 años, su vida cambiaría de un día para otro.

Sin tener ningún antecedente de leucemia en su familia, ella se sentía mal, decaída y sin ganas de levantarse de la cama. Así que decidió ir al médico quien determinó que tenía anemia y necesitaba transfusiones de sangre. Sin embargo, Leticia seguía sintiéndose mal y fue a ver dos hematólogos en México. Uno de ellos, le diagnosticó mielodisplasia y le aseguró que iba a vivir muchos años pero que no había cura ni trasplantes para personas de su edad. El segundo hematólogo le hizo una biopsia y le dijo que padecía leucemia. Leticia, temerosa y sin saber qué más hacer, buscó soluciones en la medicina alternativa pero no encontró los resultados que esperaba.

Avid hiker and marathon walker, Bill, 59, knows a lot about overcoming obstacles and testing his endurance. But when his illness required him to get two or three blood transfusions every month, he had to accept his limitations. It meant cutting short his cherished backpacking adventures or waiting alone at base camp while his buddies climbed to the summit without him.

But, today, just two years after a stem cell transplant, Bill is back on track—training for the Austin half marathon, planning a trip to Moscow in June for his daughter’s wedding and organizing a hiking trip to the Grand Canyon this fall.

Seeing her, beautifully poised, manicured and smiling, it’s hard to imagine everything Reesa has been through. You can see small bruises on her neck, chest and hands, but Reesa looks strong and stoic in spite of it all.

After receiving abnormal blood results from lab tests for the cholesterol medication she was taking, Reesa was seen by Dr. David Friedman, a San Antonio hematologist/oncologist and family friend. She was diagnosed with leukemia and eventually entered into a clinical trial of clofarabine at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

In isolation and a state of shock, Reesa says she still can’t believe it all happened. “I got one week of treatment and three weeks of observation where only doctors were allowed in the room,” Reesa says. “But once I found out I could get the clofarabine in San Antonio, there was no way I was going back to Houston.” She received six more rounds of treatment in San Antonio before she entered remission that lasted two years.

Being African-American and having type AB positive blood, Ray knew that finding a bone marrow donor match to treat his non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Ray is an Agent Orange survivor from the Vietnam War.

When Ray experienced his third NHL relapse in 2007 after numerous treatments, including an autologous bone marrow transplant, he was referred to Dr. Paul Shaughnessy, a bone marrow transplant physician with Texas Transplant Physician Group in San Antonio. After examining his options, Dr. Shaughnessy scheduled Ray for a transplant using donated umbilical cord blood.