Emotions ran high when P.B. Barathy, a mother of two, met her live-saving donor Suryadevara Bharath, a medico from the city the other day.
Ms. Barathy and Mr. Bharath saw each other for the first time in their life, but the reason the former beat Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) was Mr. Bharath’s good deed of going all out to donate his blood stem cells, despite resistance from his family. He is a donor registered with the non-profit blood stem cell registry Datri, which organised the meet at P.B. Siddhartha College of Arts & Science.
“I am here only because of Mr. Bharath who came forward and donated his stem cells. I am very thankful to him and his family,” Ms. Barathy, a homemaker and mother of two from Tamil Nadu, said.
In 2017, she was diagnosed with aggressive ALL, and the revelation turned her life upside down.
“We approached Datri, through which we found the donor with matching stem cells like our names do,” she added. Mr. Bharath said he was happy to have saved the life of a mother.
“Do not ignore any opportunity to help a person in need, there are many doctors and organisations looking out for donors. The process of the donation was not much complicated, albeit I felt some pain during the procedure of stem cell extraction,” Mr. Bharath, pursuing medicine at Dr. Pinnamaneni Siddhartha Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, said.
