Lethbridge woman leads southern Alberta effort to find bone marrow donor match for family member
LETHBRIDGE – Brayden Ross is a 17-year-old grade 12 student who should be gearing up for graduation. Instead, he’s finishing his last chemotherapy treatment at IWK Children’s Hospital in Halifax.
According to Lethbridge family member Jessica Quarterman, late last year, Brayden became ill – and at first everyone thought it was just the flu. He was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia in January.
“He’s a very active guy. He plays hockey, he plays rugby. Overall, he’s a really healthy guy. When he got sick in December, nobody was quite sure why, or what was going on. Of course, it turned out to be much more serious than that,” she explains.
Quarterman wants to do her part to help Ross, so she’s hoping to get as many people as possible in southern Alberta to register as a potential bone marrow donor with Canadian Blood Services’ OneMatch program, to give him a better chance of beating his cancer.