Cancer survivor meets his stem cell donor

In 2015, when a 20-year-old school scholar Vishnu Venugopal signed on a bit of paper agreeing to be a blood stem cell donor and allowed a mouth swab to be taken, he had no clue what he was signing up for. As a National Service Scheme (NSS) volunteer, he was simply taking part within the donor registry camp that held on the faculty campus.

Two years in the past, when DATRI, an NGO working a blood stem cell donor registry, sought him out, asking his willingness for stem cell donation to avoid wasting a younger most cancers affected person, his first response was panic. But his household gave him the braveness and help to go forward with the method.

The enormity of all of it hit him solely on Friday (September 19, 2025), when he noticed the smiling 17-year-old Adinarayanan, the younger boy with whom he now shares his blood and DNA too.

Life-defining second

“A life-defining second, no much less. I didn’t even realise that my eyes have been welling up. It’s not each day that you’re made to really feel that your life had a noble objective,” says Vishnu, who works for Infosys now and whose blood stem cell donation was what had given a brand new lease of life to Adinarayanan.

The first assembly of Adi and Vishnu, organised by DATRI, on the MG College grounds right here the place Vishnu had added his identify to the stem cell donor registry, was an emotional second for everybody gathered, together with Vishnu’s spouse and fogeys.

For Devi, Adi’s mom, phrases couldn’t outline the emotions that have been overwhelming her, on assembly her son’s guardian angel.

A single mom and a local of Anchal in Kollam district, she had struggled to carry up Adi and her cerebral palsy-afflicted elder son. Her world plunged into the depths of despair, when on the age of seven, Adi was recognized with leukemia. Since 2015 Adi had been below remedy on the Regional Cancer Centre and when the relapse occurred twice, blood stem cell transplant emerged because the final choice.

The likelihood of 1 discovering the proper human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-match from an unrelated blood stem cell donor is 1 in 10,000. Devi says it felt unimaginable to be instructed by the docs on the MVR Cancer Centre and Research Institute that an ideal HLA-match donor had been discovered for her son. The cash for the remedy was discovered by way of crowd funding. In the midst of all of it, Devi misplaced her elder son.

In the phrases of V.P. Krishnan, advisor paediatric hemato-oncologist at MVR Centre, Adi and Vishnu’s story is a miracle that science, compassion and humaneness helped occur.

Adi is immediately, in all senses of the phrase, a “ new “ particular person. He shares Vishnu’s blood and DNA. His blood group which was O unfavourable is now the donor’s B unfavourable group. He has simply resumed his Class X research at St. George Central School, Anchal.

Aby Sam John, National Operations Head – South DATRI, says that even when an ideal HLA-match is discovered, not all stem cell donations undergo, due to concern and misconceptions within the minds of individuals.

“Aadinarayanan’s story and Vishnu’s generosity remind us {that a} easy act of registering as a donor can someday save a life. With over 6.1 lakh registered donors and 1,645 transplants facilitated, we urge extra individuals to step ahead—since you might be the one in thousands and thousands, that somebody is ready for,” he says.