Help Vinay & Sameer

Dear Friends and Loved Ones,

I can’t stress to you how much I marvel at my blessed fortune every day, a fortune that all of you had a hand in creating.

If you look back at my earliest posts on this website, you’ll recall a newly-diagnosed leukemia patient needing a transplant from a grossly underrepresented and traditionally apathetic community. Along with Vinay, I challenged you all to step up and spread the word; to register and respond when called upon to save a life. I knew that this process was very unlikely to benefit me directly, but I had faith - and was convinced by Robert and others - that I had an opportunity to bring visibility to this issue to benefit future patients. This worked as hoped, and two other patients found matches through our drives. And the unimaginable happened: I also found a match through your efforts!

So who is to credit for this? Each and every one of you. It could have been your email that caused the donor to register. All of you stopped to think for a minute, “What if this was me or someone in my family?” and then did something as simple as sending an email to everyone you knew. This was Awareness Building, and was a crucial phase of your efforts. Others of you - many of whom I don’t even know but hope to seek out to thank in person one day - vested yourselves even deeper by organizing drives. You did this at your companies, your colleges, in your local communities, and at your temples of worship. And one of you actually won the luck of the draw and got to be my donor.

In all of this, I consider each and every one of you heroes. You each played a part in literally saving my life. Just think of it: if you hadn’t put in the effort you did - whether it was sending an email or organizing a drive - I would not be alive today. I would not get to be a goofball for Reena and get her to giggle like a little girl, something that brings me great joy every day. I would not get to hug my dad or cherish discussions with him about life, philosophy, and spirituality. I would not get to continue to build our startup (www.octanetech.com), playing XBox with Prashant, or making big career plans to make a bigger difference when I grow up.

Thanks to you all, however, I am not only alive but well. I am feeling 90% normal (my mind masks almost any gaps in energy, so this is my best estimate), and my medical team is quite bored with me. My first week out of the hospital, they saw me once and then called before my second scheduled appointment. “You know, you’re really not that interesting to meet with twice a week. Do you mind if we just, you know…skip the second appointment each week?” they asked. No problems here; this way I get to focus and work more! At my single weekly meeting the following week, they informed me that I am doing better than 99.9% of patients at this stage. I was blown away and immediately stopped peppering them with questions about when I would be back to full energy and get some hair on my chin. And this week, the doctor didn’t even set foot in the exam room. Oh, and I now have some hair on my chin.

All of this fortune has been divinely initiated and humanely implemented. And I can’t get over how un-difficult it was for all of us to band together, and save 3 lives, mine included, in a 3-month sustained campaign. We now are aware of 4 more individuals who desperately need donors, and I strongly urge all of you to think about the simple actions you each took to save my life. Let’s see if we all can come together one more time to create a blessed fortune for someone else.