Brandon Martinez

I am Brandon Martinez and I am 16 years old. I was diagnosed with leukemia on January 1, 2005. I was nine around that time. When I first heard the words that I had leukemia, my whole world turned upside down. My mom and dad couldn’t believe that their eldest son was suffering from a horrific disease. When the rest of my family heard the devastating news, everyone asked themselves, “How could this happen? What caused this?”

At first, I didn’t really think about it too much because I wasn’t sure what was going on with me until the doctors of CHLA helped me and explained what was happening in my body. The doctors told my parents and I that I was going to get a special treatment called chemotherapy.

After knowing what the disease was, I told the doctor, “I will take any and every medication I have to take in order to get better.” I twas three years of chemotherapy! My hair started to fall out, I was very weak and I was tired most of the time. When three years of treatment had passed, I was so happy. Everyone in my family was happy and joyous. A week later, my mom and I went to church and gave thanks to God for taking away this illness. I started back into my everyday life routine. Everything was going great – I saw my friends at school, visited family members, my family and I even went to LAS VEGAS!

Three months had gone by [when] I noticed that I wasn’t seeing right with my left eye. I told my mom and she took me to see my eye doctor at The doctor checked my eye and he said that the illness I fought against had come back. My mom and I were troubled. After [learning] the news that I had relapsed, my family was in shock that the illness came back. I went into another treatment consisting of both chemotherapy and radiation. The treatment was for two years.

Again, I told myself that I wasn’t going to let the disease get a hold of me again and that I was going to fight through it. Soon after the two years of treatment passed, I was grateful that I had surpassed this illness once more.

Three months passed. Now I was only going to the doctor once  a month, but my doctor noted something strange in my blood tests. She noticed that my platelets weren’t increasing. She ordered a CBC (Complete Blood Count), but only this time she test for any leukemia cells. After the results came back, the test came back positive. My doctor told me that I need a bone-marrow transplant. The two candidates that could match my blood type would either be my baby three-year-old sister or my younger brother.

When we told the news to my brother, with no hesitation he said, “I want to be the one that donates my bone marrow to my brother!” The moment I heard that I started to tear up. The doctors tested both my brother’s and my sister’s blood to see if any of them were a match for me. A month had passed; I went to my monthly doctor’s appointment and that’s where [he] gave my mom and I the good news: MY  BROTHER WAS A MATCH FOR ME!

My mom and I were so happy. Later that day, he told him that he was going to be my bone marrow donor. He was so happy.

May 3, 2011 – the day of my transplant. I remember that I was so excited and tired too because of all the intense treatment I underwent. After the transplant, I slowly got my strength back and was recuperating well.

Now, I always thank my brother because he had given me a second chance at life. To this day, I call him “My Little Hero.”