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Sabrie Sneller’s was diagnosed with leukemia at 19. Little did she know, that a man who made a decision to donate marrow eight years earlier would save her life.
HOLLAND, Mich. — Sabrie Sneller can see all the beauty in the world. She is in cosmetology school, something she has been dreaming about since she was a child.
“My big thing is just making women feel beautiful and making them feel good about themselves,” Sneller said.
Despite wanting to help others feel beautiful, life dealt Sneller something ugly. At just 19 years old, she went to her doctor after not feeling well. After getting some bloodwork done, she was diagnosed with cancer.
“She drops the word that I have leukemia,” Sneller said. “Just when you hear the word leukemia, it’s like you just pause, you know? And your whole life just feels like the world’s just tumbling.”
She did multiple rounds of chemotherapy, but her doctors decided she needed a bone marrow transplant.
“They took my numbers, like my blood, they took everything like that, and they put it in the system,” Sneller said. “‘Am I even going to find the right match?’ I was terrified.”
According to the National Marrow Donor Program, every three to four minutes, someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with a blood cancer — 75% of people are unable to find a suitable donor in their family.
Just a few weeks later, Sneller was matched with someone with 99% compatibility.
“The hard thing is that we don’t know anything about each other,” Sneller said. “All I knew was that he was a young male, and that’s all I could know about him. All he knew about me was that I was a young girl from Michigan and that I was 19 years old.”
The bone marrow transplant was a success, and Sneller has been cancer-free for 18 months.
It wasn’t until one year after the transplant that she was able to find out who her donor was. She eagerly hoped he would sign papers to meet her.
Meeting the donor
“I forgot about it, for sure.”
Brady Hughes, a manufacturing engineer in Missouri, signed up as a bone marrow donor at a college booth eight years ago.
“A couple of friends are like, ‘Hey, we should do this.’ So why not?” Hughes said. “They go, ‘you may never hear back from us.'”
He did. He first heard back from them about a match with a 70-year-old man; but he was not chosen for the transplant. It was only a few months after that that he got the call to help Sneller.
“It was a quick decision in that moment eight years ago now, but it’s also been a lot of continuous, ‘hey, yes, I do want to do this,'” Hughes said.
In October, a year after the transplant, Sneller received Hughes’ contact information from her doctor. She immediately texted him.
A few months later, they met in person. Hughes and his mother drove to Michigan to spend the weekend with Sneller and her family.
“I’ve told people that’s the most fulfilling weekend of my life,” Hughes said.
Sneller said she is alive because of him and was emotional upon meeting.
“It was just incredible, because I’m 99% him,” Sneller said. “It’s crazy because how could this be such a perfect match? We don’t even know each other. We live in states away from each other, and here we are… a perfect match.”
Hughes said he now feels like he has a new younger sister in Sneller. He is even planning on attending her wedding later this year.
“He saved my life and gave me a second chance at life,” Sneller said. “That’s really hard to talk about sometimes because people don’t understand that he did something so selfless for me, and I’m here because of him. That’s pretty incredible.”
If you are interested in being a bone marrow donor, you can sign up through the National Marrow Donor Program’s website.
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