Childhood: Sister Hearts Carolina Tejada was born in Cali, Colombia in 1978. She spent a happy, healthy childhood alongside her older brother, Juan Guillermo, and her twin sister, Catalina. At age 11, however, Juan Guillermo, who was three years older...
In 2007, DYung Lu was working full-time, going to school full-time, and getting very little sleep. Given his hectic schedule, he was unsurprised when he started to feel physical ill and worn down, but he continued to press forward. Then...
By Krista Thomas, Communications Strategist In early 2019, Kristi Trog and her husband Josh were thrilled but also surprised to find out that Kristi was pregnant with their first child. The pair counted this news as a true miracle. Though...
It’s hard to believe that for the bulk of 2019, Katy Crain knew very little about cancer. She considered herself lucky to have never had any close family members affected by it, and while she was sympathetic to cancer patients...
By Lia Adams, guest blogger, Milestone blood donor and plasma recipient Medical Background When I was a kid, we didn’t know I had a primary immune deficiency. All we knew was that I got sick more often than average, sometimes with...
This summer, Stanford Blood Center (SBC) and LifeServe Blood Center brought together two very special heroes. Shanti Minkstein, a photographer from San Francisco, California, and Lance Becker, a banker from Des Moines, Iowa, joined a Zoom call to discuss their...
As first-time parents, Kylie De La O-Menard and her husband Guillaume Menard knew that there were many challenges they would have to work through as part of learning to care for a new baby — the exhaustion, the baby’s crying,...
When Teddy Oh was 18 months old, his mother and father, Won and Jin, knew something was not right. Teddy had had a persistent cough, and though his doctors did not think much of it at first, the cough was...
In May of 2013, Nicole Porto was thriving in all aspects of life. She had built up a life for herself that she was proud of. Physically, she had been training for the Brooklyn Half Marathon and felt extremely strong;...
When Rachel Ren* was a junior, she was thrilled at the opportunity to give blood at her high school’s SBC mobile drive. Rachel had never had an experience with blood donation before — never had a family member need blood...