There are some gifts that can never be repaid. At 16-years-old, Calvin McIntyre was facing a future he'd never imagined.
“From the day we found out about this disease that I had never heard of before,” says Calvins mother Alfie. “Before the doctor told me what it was - it was devastating; we thought we might could lose a child.”
There are diagnoses that changes lives and lives that changes diagnoses.
“My wife had given birth to quadruplet boys and we lost our youngest one at six weeks, so I knew then that if they needed me that I would do it because I didn't really want another parent to experience what I did,” said bone marrow donor Jeffery McGowen.
Jeffrey, a Harris County Sheriff's deputy, was the life that changed everything for Calvin. In 2009, he donated his bone marrow to a boy in Virginia he'd never heard of.
“It was just very scary because I never had thought about transplants,” explains McIntyre.
On Calvin’s 17th birthday, he got a new life and is getting better each day.
Calvin and Jeffery met for the first time at a ceremony in Houston.
Now these strangers, who share something special in their bones, are sharing even more.