Happy Cancer-Free Anniversary, Joseph!

Six years ago today, I had the privilege of donating bone marrow to my younger brother, Joseph. He was only 16 years old, recently diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia and near death.
As God had ordained, all three of his older siblings were perfect - not only good, but perfect - matches for donation.
I was chosen for a few reasons that I won't go into here....and was happy to do whatever I could. I ended up having a much more difficult recovery than I anticipated, but it all ended well and Joseph is perfectly healthy today.
I like to tease him that he has "girly" blood, which in fact he does. His blood carries exactly the same DNA as mine and his blood type is not his original A- but now A+, as mine is. He got an upgrade, that's what I say!
We are so thankful for his healing and his life. The anniversary of September 11 has many sad thoughts and memories associated with it....but for our family, it has happy ones as well, because that was the date (one year after the terrorist attacks) that Joseph got a new chance at life.

Note: I don't have any recent pictures of Joseph....this one was from Christmas 2006, where he's obviously getting a kick out of reading a ballerina book to Corban. HA.