March,2014 UPDATE -This month will be the seventh anniversary of my second transplant and I'm still cancer free!! I am now in my second year of college at Illinois State University and loving it. I'm majoring in molecular and cellular biology and want to do research when I graduate. Although I still battle with chronic illness, I'm happy and stable and am looking forward to what the future holds for me.

2012  My name is Evan Garrett. I was diagnosed on December 3, 2004, the day before my 11th birthday. I was diagnosed with a rare type of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia( ALL). What made it rare was that I was Philadelphia Chromosome Positive.Since then, I've had two stem cell transplants with two different donors. Both of them were from the National Marrow Donor Program. I was very fortunate that my doctors found a perfect match for me in the NMDP for both transplants. My first transplant in May, 2005 was at Children's Memorial in Chicago and my second was done by the doctors of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in Washington State.It has been two years since my second transplant ,and though I have suffered through many chronic illnesses since then, I am still in complete remission. I am now a freshman attending high school for half of the school day. I am the healthiest I have been in the last four years. My goal is to get back on the baseball field as quickly as I can because that's what fulfills me the most. I cannot thank all my doctors and my two donors enough for what they have done for me.