Leo: A Unique Bone Marrow Transplant

For anyone lucky enough to meet 14-year-old Leo and his mom Rebecca, it’s obvious how close they are. They finish each other’s sentences, use sarcasm as medicine and love to reminisce on old stories. But what you can’t see from the outside is that Leo’s bone marrow is actually Rebecca’s.

An aplastic anemia diagnosis

At 6 years old, Leo’s pediatrician found a rash near his ankle and diagnosed it as . But as New Year’s Eve rolled around, Rebecca was nervous when Leo was feeling worse and not interested in candy or movies like he normally would be. When his fever hit 106 degrees, Rebecca rushed Leo to the hospital.

At the hospital, Leo had a blood panel done as a precaution, and after a bone marrow biopsy, doctors diagnosed him with severe aplastic anemia — a blood disorder that prevents his bone marrow from producing red and white blood cells and platelets.

Thankfully, Rebecca knew someone who was a patient of Taizo Nakano, MD, Program Lead for Bone Marrow Failure Disorders, and that our Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders was the best place for Leo’s treatment.

“It was a no-brainer we wanted to come to Children’s,” Rebecca says. “We loved that there were things just for kids that we couldn’t get somewhere else.”

A rare bone marrow transplant

Leo started with medication to stop his immune system from attacking healthy bone marrow. That meant that any time he got so much as a sniffle, Leo was in the hospital. Leo optimistically viewed it as a time to play video games and get new stuffed animals from our gift shop. However, his medication wasn’t working quite fast enough, and Dr. Nakano recommended Leo get an emergency bone marrow transplant.

“Your hope is when you do the transplant, you will have a donor that is a really high match,” Rebecca says. “Unfortunately, my daughter wasn’t.”

Leo moved forward with a haplo-identical transplant, or a “half-matched” donor transplant, between Leo and his sister, Kit. Unfortunately, this wasn’t successful. Looking to avoid infection, bleeding and organ injury, our transplant team recommended a second transplant from Rebecca along with full body radiation.

The second time was the charm.

A dream for the future

After months of treatment, Leo’s health improved greatly, and he was able to go home. He went back to school and still has multiple yearly visits with his endocrinologist and our cancer specialists for follow-up care.

“If I had to describe Leo, I would say he’s larger than life,” Rebecca says. “He literally fills up a room and it's impossible not to notice him. He is so wise and insightful for a 14-year-old boy, a reflection of the experience he went through fighting and surviving aplastic anemia. It taught him gratitude and empathy in a way I don't think everyone learns at such a young age.”

As he enters high school, Leo is excited to take honors biology and talks about someday becoming a doctor. While he’s always wanted to be a doctor, his interest in The Pitt, a television show that depicts a day in an emergency department, and his experience as a patient at Children’s Colorado,  have inspired him to become an ER doctor  — a bright future made possible by his mother’s bone marrow donation.

“Donating wasn’t painful or difficult,” says Rebecca. “You have it in your mind that it is going to be this big production, but it’s anticlimactic and you’re saving lives.”

Thanks to her donation, Rebecca and Leo will be able to create many more stories to reminisce about.