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It was January of 2023 when Dr. Daniel Erickson, then a student at the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine at The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, was sporting perhaps the biggest smile of his life while Facetiming with Stephanie Pugh for the first time. Stephanie, a mother of two from Pennsylvania, didn’t quite know what to expect, or what to say during that phone call other than “you just saved my life.”

Through a series of selfless acts that started in the fall of 2016, Erickson did just that, in the same way that fellow 2024 TCOM graduate Ann Hollas did. Both Erickson and Hollas signed up as potential donors through the National Marrow Donor Program, formerly known as Be The Match.

“There was a blood drive going on in College Station in 2016 while I was attending Texas A&M University, and I had donated blood many times,” Erickson said. “There was a table for Be The Match and I told them they could put me on the registry as well. I just put it out of my mind from that point, I just didn’t think I would ever get a call to donate so I didn’t think about it after that.”

Before the call came, Pugh’s entire world was turned upside down by one of the rarest blood cancers in the world.

Joint Pain

Anyone with children can attest, that getting kids safely buckled into any car seat sometimes requires superhuman strength. Life was busy for Pugh, she was a stay-at-home mom with two young kids but in the summer of 2021, Pugh was having difficulty getting her kids buckled up safely, she didn’t have superhuman strength, she had no strength at all.

“I started to have joint pain and pressing the buttons on the kid’s car seats became difficult,” Pugh said. “I was also having difficulty sleeping and a lot of sweating overnight so I went to my PCP.”

After some tests were conducted for arthritis, she was given some medication to reduce inflammation. Pugh wasn’t convinced that was the issue, so she went for a second opinion. After a full blood panel was conducted, she got an immediate phone call from her physician and something she was not expecting to hear.

“I was not prepared for her to say ‘you are going to an oncologist, something isn’t right,’” said Pugh. “I thought I had an autoimmune problem, I wasn’t sleeping great, but I thought that was just young motherhood.”

Something wasn’t right, Pugh did bone marrow biopsies, bloodwork, and variety of tests, but answers and solutions were very few, which lead to a lot of frustration.

“Nobody was very forthcoming with me,” Pugh said.  Exactly what type of cancer Pugh had was still a mystery as August turned into September, and then the news came.

Pugh was diagnosed with Myelodysplastic syndrome, also known as Myelodysplasia. MDS is a rare type of blood cancer that affects about four in 100,000 people in the United States, with between 12,000 and 30,000 people being diagnosed with MDS annually. The cancer is primarily found in older adults, with 75% of the cases being in patients 60 or older. Pugh was just 35 years old.

“There isn’t a stage for this type of cancer and it was very frustrating because it wasn’t categorized like other cancers since it is so rare,” Pugh said. “I was just terrified that my kids were going to be raised without a mom and my husband was going to have to be a single parent.”

There was only one cure for this type of cancer. Chemotherapy could only do so much, but Pugh needed to find a match and have a bone marrow transplant to survive.

An Unexpected Phone Call

It was Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021, and Erickson was grinding his way through year two of medical school and studying at a friend’s house for an upcoming pulmonology exam. His phone rang with a Minneapolis area code popping up, but instead of screening the call from a number he didn’t recognize like so many do these days, Erickson answered it. The National Marrow Donor Program was on the line with the news that Erickson was a match.

“It was just shocking, I didn’t know what to say,” Erickson said. “They told me this was an expedited case and asked if I as I willing to go to the next step.”

Erickson agreed, which led to a screening phone call to go over his medical history. One week after the initial phone call, Erickson was doing a physical and a blood draw for genetic testing. The ordinary waiting period is 60 days from the blood draw for the testing to return, in this case, it was three weeks.

On Nov. 9 Erickson received word that he was the primary match and they were ready to do the donation if he was. Erickson never wavered.

“I was 25 at the time and I heard that she was a 35-year-old woman with blood cancer,” Erickson said. “That’s all I needed to know, I said okay, I could be donating to my sister-in-law, who has three children, who was 35 at the time and that’s what I pictured in my mind.”

What Erickson had pictured in his head was about as close to Stephanie Pugh as you can get. Meanwhile, Pugh had started chemo in September while the search for her genetic twin was underway, and her anxiety level was high.

Then the news came, Pugh had not just one, but eight potential matches.

“I completely broke down in tears, thanking God when they told me,” Pugh said. “I was just ecstatic and the feeling that everything was going to be okay.”

Time is of the Essence

According to the NMDP, every three to four minutes someone is diagnosed with blood cancer, leaving many of those patients searching for a cure, which often is only found in blood donor matches. Through many partnerships worldwide, the registry has access to more than 41 million potential donors. The range of a patient finding a donor varies between 29 and 79% based on a variety of factors.

Pugh had found eight potential matches, but soon that list was whittled down to just one, Daniel Erickson. After rounds of chemotherapy in September, October and again in November, Pugh had made the progress necessary in her bloodwork to receive the donation.

Erickson himself was ready to go when he was told he was a genetic match on Nov. 9, but still had to navigate a donation time around his medical school schedule, which wasn’t easy. With quizzes, practice for physical exams, studying, and tests, the window for opportunity was tight, but on Dec. 20, Erickson drove down to Houston to donate and came back home to spend Christmas with his family.

“I was just a vessel sitting in a chair for a few hours, which wasn’t hard for me, but to know that I could be used to radically change someone’s life, that’s what I’m called to do,” Erickson said. “It was a stressful time, but I found a lot of peace that God was calling me to use this situation that was so much bigger than me.”

In Pennsylvania, things were getting ramped up. Donation day was Dec. 28, 2021, but before that, Pugh received five straight days of high-dose chemotherapy that wiped out her immune system. Erickson himself only knew a few things about Pugh, but he did know her diagnosis.

“I went and looked it up, I remember getting through the introductory page and saying ‘I’d rather not know’ and I closed the page,” Erickson said. “I was nervous about it, but at the time I felt like it was 0% or 100%, she’s going to be okay or she’s not, reading about the statistics isn’t going to change a thing. It didn’t matter what I knew about the disease.”

The moment had arrived, the anticipation was high for Pugh as she received Erickson’s donation.

“I was very excited, but it was also a bit underwhelming,” Pugh said with a little laugh. “They had a big cart full of stuff, and then it was just this little bag, I kept thinking there had to be more. They manually pumped it into my lines very slowly using a stopwatch.”

Forty-five minutes later, it was done.

Time to Recover and Time to Meet

Chemotherapy isn’t for the faint of heart, it’s a systemic treatment that uses chemicals to attack not only cancer cells but also healthy cells alike, causing the nasty side effects you so often hear about. High-dose chemotherapy is on a whole different plateau. Pugh experienced some of the worst parts of her journey after receiving the life-saving donation from Erickson.

“I started to get blisters in my mouth, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t swallow, I tried everything,” Pugh said.

She was receiving transfusions of platelets and blood until her counts came back, and on day seven her immune came back to life. Pugh was discharged from the hospital, but the recovery process was slow.

It wasn’t until April of 2022 that she began to have the strength to leave her house after being sequestered for months in her bedroom while trying to recover. Pugh began to regain her strength and slowly things were returning to normal, but she had to wait one more time, and that was when she could contact Erickson. The NMDP does not let either the donor or recipient contact each other for a calendar year.

“I was literally counting down the days when it was a year out,” Pugh said. “I always wanted to meet the donor, there was never a time I was questioning that. I wanted to meet this person, my family, my mom really wanted to meet him or her.”

Erickson himself for the remainder of 2022 was always wondering in the back of his mind how Pugh was doing, but he was also concentrating on medical school.

A year had finally passed, and on Jan. 5, 2023, she had the opportunity to contact Erickson for the first time via email, who was on rotation in Longview at the time.

“I remember the subject line said ‘Daniel?’” Erickson said. “I thought what in the world is this, opened it up and it was her. She told me her name, more of her story, and the details of what happened. I was overwhelmed, and I couldn’t reply to her until later that day, I cried a little bit because I was so overjoyed that she was doing so well.”

Later that day the pair spoke for the first time.

“I looked like a mess, but all I really remember is he had the biggest smile on his face,” Pugh said. “I can’t imagine how I looked to him and telling him he saved my life.”

In the spring of 2023, Erickson made the trip to Pennsylvania to meet with Pugh and her family for the first time. Emotions came pouring out.

“It was extremely overwhelming when he came up, to hear his side of the story and open a can of worms that I had put a lid on,” Pugh said. “It was very hard for me and my husband emotionally.”

“I was terrified at first because I wasn’t sure if it was the right idea to go meet her, for a couple of reasons,” Erickson said. “There is no playbook for this, I wanted to meet her, hug her, and pray with her and we got to do all of those things. I’m not a spotlight person, I didn’t want the spotlight and praise and recognition, I just don’t need or want that, if I can be behind the scenes working to help people that’s what I want.”

He made a return trip in October of 2023 and they keep in regular contact. Pugh’s parents came to Fort Worth in May of 2024 for Erickson’s graduation from TCOM. Erickson, who considers Pugh like a sister now, began his emergency medicine residency in July, and only one place seemed fitting, Pennsylvania, one hour away from Pugh. The fact that Erickson is a physician was not lost on her team of doctors and the entire Pugh family.

“My oncologist found it very ironic,” Pugh said. “My sister is a doctor, my mom is in the health care field and I would give the shirt off my back to save anyone else, and that’s who Daniel is. He doesn’t want to be a hero, he just wants to help and is a good, genuine human. I don’t think being a doctor is that important in the story, he’s just a good person and his family is great.”

An estimated 1.24 million blood cancer cases occur annually worldwide, and the demand for those to join the NMDP registry has never been greater.

“I would say please join because at the very least you are giving hope,” Erickson said. “Right now, it’s just below 50% of those with blood cancer who have a match on the registry.”

“It saved my life, there was no other cure to the type of cancer I had except for a match,” Pugh said. “It literally saved my life, and without people registering to agree to go through just a little discomfort for somebody else, lives are saved that way. How a human can give part of their body to save someone else is just an absolutely amazing gift, it’s the gift of life.

Ann Hollas and Daniel Erickson did just that, the process was minimal, but the impact was immeasurable. To learn more about how you can register click here.

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