Around here, we're big believers in beating the odds. However, I was not prepared for this story.

Earlier this month, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle published an article about Bob and Jeannine DeRoos, a couple living in Greece, who signed up to the registry to help a friend, then eventually forgot about the whole thing.

After his procedure, Bob was out of work for a couple days; the pain turned out to be surprisingly minimal.

The biggest surprise, though, came the day after his surgery. Piper Wood, a donor services specialist at the greater New York state chapter of the National Marrow Donor Program had just finished guiding Bob through his procedure when she started searching for a new match. Jeannine's name popped up on her computer screen.

"The hair on the back of my neck stood up," Wood said. The chance that anyone is a match for a stranger is slim enough; the odds that two people in a family would be called to donate are estimated at 1 in 40,000. The DeRoos are amused by the nurse's exclamation that this has never happened, but they make no big deal of the peculiarity.

"Opportunity arises," Bob said simply. "We're humbled by it."

See? Anything can happen.

Labels: donor stories