NEWARK, Del. — Nine-year-old Caleb Quick has always loved superheroes. Hawkeye is his favorite, and Captain America and Spider-Man are a close second and third.
However, those characters all pale in comparison to the five real-life superheroes Caleb met Sunday afternoon: Steven Aubuchon, David Blake, Tobi Fitzgerald, Kenneth Haley and Ernest Kulhanek.
Their superpowers? Compassion, generosity and the willingness to donate the blood that Caleb needed to survive his two-year fight against cancer.
“Thank you all. You saved our boy’s life,” Caleb’s mother, Naomi Quick, told the five blood donors during an emotional ceremony. “There are no words enough to thank you for what you’ve done for our family, but I hope you can hear it in our voices and see it in his eyes how very grateful we are for what you’ve done.”
Caleb was diagnosed with leukemia in 2020 at the age of 5 and went through 26 months of intense treatment before going into remission.
Chemotherapy treatments designed to kill cancer cells also kill healthy blood cells, meaning that many cancer patients rely on blood transfusions. Caleb received three units of packed red blood cells and two units of platelets, administered on three separate occasions over a period of six months.