Wedding brings bone marrow donor, recipient together

One and a half years after a Tennessee woman received a bone marrow transplant with stem cells donated by a Colorado woman, the two met for the first time during a very special occasion, the donor's wedding. ************************************************************ Want even more heartwarming stories?! Subscribe to Humankind's YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/1IrNzUN Like Humankind on Facebook: http://bit.ly/fbhkvids ************************************************************ Jonathan Gonzalez, KUSA-TV - DENVER -- One and a half years after a Knoxville, Tennessee woman received a bone marrow transplant with stem cells donated by a Colorado woman, the two met for the first time at a lower downtown Denver restaurant on Friday. Debbie Brown, who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia on March 3, 2013, received the transplant about one year after the diagnosis. "Both my sisters were tested to see if they were a match to do the stem cell transplant, but they weren't a close enough match," she said. "They found Lori and she was actually, if I remember correctly, an eight out of 10-point match." Lori Ketteler, from Colorado, had signed up to be a donor years prior, and decided to donate bone marrow to Debbie, who she didn't know at the time. Debbie received the bone marrow transplant on March 30, 2014. "I can't think about her without getting emotional. She saved my life," Debbie said. "How do you repay that? How do you ever show the gratitude you feel?" This past March -- one year after the procedure -- Debbie wanted to thank Lori, so she requested her donor's information. "She had the option to either agree or disagree with releasing her info, but she released her info," said Debbie, who soon received a letter from Lori. "I thought, 'What's Vanderbilt sending me in this pink envelope with a computer-label address?' And it was a card from Lori," Debbie said, "Just saying she hoped I was doing well. Of course she didn't know who I was, but she hoped I was doing well and that the transplant went well. Just sending me good wishes." Soon, the two spoke on the phone. "As we talked, I said, 'Well, I want to meet you at some point.' And we continued talking, and she was telling me different things about herself and she told me she was getting married," Debbie explained. "And then she just immediately said, 'Do you want to come?' And I was really surprised, so I was like, 'To your wedding?' I just didn't imagine that's how it would happen and she said, 'Yeah!' So, now here I am." Debbie said there was no way to properly thank Lori for what she did for her, and wants to inspire more people to donate. "For Lori, I understood it was almost more like a blood donation for her, and a little more complicated, I guess. But that's a lot simpler than having to go through somebody's hip. And so, it's not the big scary process that I think some people envision it to be," Debbie said. "I want to be an encouragement to other people to please donate those things: blood, plasma, and sign up to be a bone marrow donor because I've lived it. I know how important those things are. And that people don't realize how simply they can donate something that can save somebody's life." For more of the story, click here: http://usat.ly/1jnNdou