Imagine being able to hug the person who saved your life. On Friday, a 22-year-old cancer survivor got to do just that when she met the man who donated the bone marrow that she desperately needed in order to push her disease into remission.



"I was so nervous beforehand — was I supposed to hug him or shake his hand?" Sam Bieno tells Yahoo Shine of her airport meeting with her donor, 27-year-old Neal Wendt, who flew to Madison, Wisconsin, from Austin, Texas, for the occasion. "As soon as I saw him, we both started smiling."



Wendt was equally anxious but had another concern on his mind. "I was mostly unsure of what to wear," he jokingly tells Yahoo Shine. Wendt's mother and sister, who had accompanied him on the trip, also met Bieno, her parents, and her younger sister.

In August 2012, Bieno, then a 20-year-old junior at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. “My only symptoms were bruising and fatigue, so I was shocked when my doctor suggested testing me for cancer,” says Bieno. “Within three days, I was diagnosed.”

Bieno immediately began rigorous rounds of chemotherapy; however, due to a genetic mutation that would enable the leukemia to keep returning, she desperately needed a stem cell transplant (otherwise known as a bone marrow transplant), a process that involves transferring new cells into the patient to jump-start the body into producing healthier ones.

At first Bieno turned to her older brother and sister, since a donation from a relative reduces the risk that the immune system will reject its new cells, but neither was a match — a problem 70 percent of patients have. So Bieno secured her place on a bone marrow donor list and waited her turn.

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A month later, Bieno got the news she had been waiting for: She had a donor. “I was so curious who it was, but all the registry would tell me was that he was a 26-year-old male,” she says. After receiving rounds of chemotherapy and radiation to clean out her marrow, Bieno underwent the transplant, a one-hour procedure that involved receiving the cells through a port in her arm that traveled to the heart. “The entire time, I was wondering who my donor was — I wanted to thank him a million times, but I felt helpless because I had such little info to go on,” she recounts.

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Per registry rules, donors are allowed to make contact whenever they choose, but those who do typically wait one full year after the transplant, to ensure it worked. However, 100 days postsurgery (the point at which doctors know for certain that the surgery was successful), recipients are allowed to write a letter to their donor, delivered by the registry, but cannot disclose personal information such as their name or address. “I wrote my donor to thank him and learned later that he received my letter and wrote me back, but it got lost in the mail,” says Bieno.

Over the next few months, Bieno’s cancer went into remission and in July, she stopped chemotherapy and re-enrolled in college. In late November, just as she decided to host a bone marrow drive on campus, she coincidentally received a shocking text message. “It said, ‘Hi, my name is Neal and I’m your bone marrow donor. I would like to meet you. Call me,’” recalls Bieno. “I just started crying.”

Later that night over the phone, Bieno learned her donor was named Neal Wendt, a former captain in the United States Air Force who lives in Austin. “I mostly remember crying and saying thank you,” says Bieno. "We also agreed that Neal and his family would fly to Wisconsin in April so we could all meet each other."



For Wendt, the phone call was equally emotional. "A few years ago I agreed to donate my bone marrow to an older woman with leukemia but she died before I could do it,” he says. “So when I got a call about 21-year-old girl in Wisconsin, I jumped at the chance.”

He donated in November 2012 by undergoing a process that involved a visit to the hospital, where he was hooked up to an IV that collected his stem cells. The procedure left him with a “hangover-type feeling” for days. “My mom flew to Texas to take care of me and every time I wanted to complain I asked her to remind me of what the recipient was going through,” says Wendt.

However, despite his hero status in Bieno’s eyes, Wendt rejects the notion. “I don’t want people to think what I did is a big deal, because that might deter them from donating their stem cells,” he says. “All it takes to know whether you’re a donor is a quick cheek sample with a cotton swab." (Donors can get on a bone marrow registry at BeTheMatch.org). What is mind-blowing, says Wendt, is now that his DNA is inside Bieno’s body, she’s suddenly allergic to cats — just like he is.



The pair and their families plan to spend their weekend visiting local museums, and Bieno will introduce Wendt to Wisconsin beer and the state's famous cheese curds and bratwurst. "Our main goal is to get to know each other," says Wendt. "That's the most important thing."



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