My name is Carlos. I am 18 years old and my plan is to start college in the spring.
I was first diagnosed at the end of eighth grade with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
I was treated at Stony Brook Hospital where I went through chemo, radiation and referred for transplant.
In December of the year 2020, a week before Christmas, the cancer came back again .I had the opportunity to spend that Christmas with my family but right after Christmas I had to be admitted into the hospital to start my chemo so we didn’t get to spend the New Year’s together.
During hospitalization, my condition deteriorated. My organs started to fail and I was placed in a medically induced coma. After the medical team did everything to save me-I started to feel better.
They took my sedation off slowly and they took the tube out so I could breathe on my own. I had to learn how eat liquids through my nose and learn how to walk again which I did! The next step was another try at a bone marrow transplant and this time they chose my older sister to be my donor and the whole preparation for the bone marrow transplant went as good as it possibly can with all these chemo. I got my transplant in July 2021 and I had 99.9% of my donor cells two week after infusion!
I am now 6 months post bone marrow transplant and I am in remission all thanks to God and the doctors.
I graduated from high school and on April 10, I turned 18. No one thought I would be able to reach these milestones because of how sick I was but here I am today getting better and stronger by the day .