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Chaz and Meredith Littlejohn
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Be The Match Walk+Run
About two years ago, local software developer Chaz Littlejohn and his family’s lives were forever changed when his sister, Meredith, was diagnosed with leukemia. Like the more than 12,000 blood-cancer patients in the U.S. every year, Meredith needed a bone marrow transplant to give her the best chance of recovery.
That’s when Chaz and his family got in contact with Be The Match, a donor registry operated by the National Marrow Donor Program that connects patients with their donor matches for life-saving transplants. Although Chaz was not a match for his sister, Meredith received a transplant from an anonymous donor.
Sadly, the seven rounds of chemotherapy Meredith endured had taken too much of a toll, and she succumbed to cancer last November. But Chaz’s experience with Be the Match was far from over.
“Two weeks after my sister passed, I got a call from Be the Match telling me that I was a potential match for a 64-year-old man who had the same type of leukemia as my sister. I thought about how great it would be if I could give to somebody else and make it so that the patient and their family didn’t have to go through what my family went through,” Chaz explains.
Soon after, Chaz found out that he was a 100-percent match for the patient. In March, he went through the process to extract stem cells from his blood for the donation.
“One month after donating, I received word that the man had been discharged from the hospital,” Chaz says. “It was very rewarding.”
This Saturday, Chaz—along with fellow marrow donors, transplant patients, and supporters—will be participating in the Be The Match Walk+Run fundraiser at Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park.
“What Be the Match does has a very meaningful impact and touches everyone who’s been diagnosed with a blood disease,” says Chaz. “The value of the donor registry is immeasurable—everyone should consider it.”
For more information on Be The Match and this weekend’s event, visit BeTheMatch.org and BeTheMatchWalkRun.org.
