North Texas teen meets life-saving bone marrow donor
A North Texas teenager met the stranger who gave him a life-saving bone marrow transplant for the very first time on Friday.
Chi-heng Chan, who is 17 years old, is now cancer-free thanks to her donation.
He was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia in May of 2019, when he was 13 years old,. Chan underwent a year of chemotherapy at Children's Health in Dallas, but his cancer returned.
A bone marrow transplant was his only hope for survival.
"When I got the call, it was scary and surprising," said Sarah Yang, who turned out to be his perfect match. "But it was also kind of a moment of clarity. This is a small thing I can do that to me feels like the right thing to do, the good thing to do, and will make the world slightly better."
Yang had registered to be a donor back in college.
She underwent surgery in California to extract bone marrow from her hip to be sent to Chan in Dallas.
"To be honest, I felt relieved," Chan said. "Made me feel really grateful for them, doing that for me and just in general, out of the kindness of their heart, to have a chance of saving someone's life."
Three years later, he got to thank Yang in person at the very hospital he received the life-saving transplant.
It was an emotional moment for them and their families.
"I cannot thank you enough," Chan told Yang. "I don't even know what to say."
Yang said she's grateful to play a part in Chan's journey and to see him thriving now, cancer-free.
"Certainly donating bone marrow is hard, but going through a bone marrow transplant is harder," she said. "I have a lot of gratitude for the fortitude and the strength that he's shown, and I feel a huge amount of pride for everything he's accomplished since."