WATERVLIET, N.Y. (NEWS10)– In October of this year, at just thirty years old, Katie Wygel was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Since then, she’s completed her first round of chemo therapy, and is now in need of a matching stem cell donor–all while being a loving wife, and mother, to three young children. The community in Watervliet came together to support her this morning, showing how this holiday season, you can gift someone a second chance.
This morning, Katie’s loved ones partnered with the Wicklund Warriors to host a swab drive. It was an effort to search for a match for Katie, and others in need of a lifesaving donor.
Get the latest news, weather, sports and entertainment delivered right to your inbox!
“The greatest gift you can give is the gift of life,” said Deanna Wicklund, the president and founder of Wicklund Warriors. “Fifteen thousand people in the United States need an unrelated donor for their stem cell transplant. Our goal here today is to get more people into the database. The more diversity too, the better, so that somebody can find their life saving match. Every twenty-seven seconds, somebody is diagnosed with blood cancer in the world. So it’s more prolific than you think.”
Katie and her family said the search for a match is like finding a needle in a haystack, and this event helped improve those odds immensely…