One woman gained a special connection that will last a lifetime with a two-year-old girl.
Amelia Bellmore was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia when she was only seven months old. It is “a cancer of the blood and bone marrow.” If not treated it will get progressively worse quickly, according to the National Cancer Institute.
In order for Amelia to survive this aggressive form of cancer, she needed a bone marrow transplant.
“For a transplant to be successful they have to really have almost essentially no detectable disease left in their body,” Amelia’s father, Ryan Bellmore, explained to “Good Morning America.”
Continuing he said, “So we were doing tests up until like five days before she actually got the transplant to make sure that she was actually eligible so there was the excitement of realizing she had a transplant and then it was like, can she actually receive it?”
Shawen Bueckers, a college student, registered to become a bone marrow donor through Be The Match.
As their website reads, “For the thousands of people diagnosed every year with life-threatening blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma, a cure exists. Over the past 30 years Be The Match, operated by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), has managed the most diverse marrow registry in the world. We work every day to save lives through transplant.”
Bueckers said that when she signed up she didn’t think that she had a clear meaning of what “Be The Match” meant for her then.
After matching with Amelia they finally met in March 2022.
“Before I met my recipient and her family in person, we were actually able to exchange some letters between each other,” Bueckers said.
Bueckers said that the one letter that Amelia’s family sent to her that stuck out to her and she still carries with her is a letter sharing the impact that their daughter had on them.
“That she was their driving force forward, their driving force to do better each day, to smile more, to just live life to the fullest,” Bueckers explained.
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Amelia’s mother, Rebecca Bellmore, shared her thoughts on the life-changing experience, “It was pretty incredible to meet the person who saved your kid’s life.”
Proverbs 3:27 says, “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.”
Speaking on being a donor Bueckers said, “This has become a large aspect of my life and it’s something that I think everyone should be involved in if they can. And even if they can’t they should be finding people who they know can be involved.”