Alicia Rodriguez

In early 2003, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). This is a very aggressive form of cancer and completely took over my body in a matter of days. I was placed at St. Christopher’s Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia for four months straight. During this time, I received a brutal assortment of experimental chemotherapy, which left my body completely drained. It soon became necessary for me to receive blood transfusions almost every day. My blood counts were so low that I needed just as many platelet transfusions as blood, but the platelets were harder to come by. It was a long uphill battle for me to overcome this debilitating disease, but with help from the good people who decided to take time out of their busy lives to donate blood, I am now a healthy, 21-year-old full-time student.