Hi. My name is Stephen Dorcich. My family calls me Stjepan or little Stephen because my Tata is a Stephen too. I am 18 months old and I like motorcycles, trucks and I love to climb! I live in San Jose, California and I am a pretty normal kid except that I have Primary Immune Deficiency called Hyper IGM, CD40 Ligand. My immune system doesn’t communicate the right way, so I cannot fight off bacteria, viruses and other bad things that make us sick. I was diagnosed at 5 ˝ months old after I got a pneumonia called pneumocystis and was in the PICU at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. Fortunately, there is an IV treatment that I receive every 3 weeks called IVIG that helps my system fight off basic stuff so that I am not in the hospital all the time. Also, I am lucky because my disorder can be cured with a Bone Marrow Transplant. That’s why I am writing this letter. I am still searching for a 10/10 match to make my chances of a good transplant happen. My Mama is 100% Croatian and my Tata is 50% Croatian and the chances of finding a better match is with people who have my similar background. There are over 10 million people in the registry already, but there are still adults and kids like me that haven’t found a perfect match yet. If you would like to help and are interested in joining the National Bone Marrow registry, you can no matter where you live. Check out this website: www.marrow.org and click on HOW YOU CAN HELP and then on JOIN THE DONOR REGISTRY. From there, you can join in person or online. You can either find a drive in your area or you can contact a center that is close to you to set up an appointment. They will either take a cheek swab or draw a tube of blood. I do know that most places will let you join the registry for free if you donate blood at the same time or donate at a drive. It’s that easy! Also, if you didn’t know, there is always a blood shortage so you can do 2 good things at once! If you have any questions, the website is really helpful or you can call your local center. Thanks for taking the time to read this and please pass this on to anyone you think might be interested. The more people that join the better chance of saving a life, maybe even mine!!
Thanks again,
Little Stephen Dorcich
For more information contact Marie Dorcich at [email protected]
Formatted for CROWN by Marko Puljić
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