For Leo Goldman, saving his brother’s life was easier than he expected.
“I just went in, and I woke up and my back hurt a little bit,” the 15-year-old Duxbury resident said of a bone marrow extraction for which he was sedated. “It hurt a little bit, but it wasn’t anything compared to what it would do (for my brother).”
Stem cell transplants have now saved 12-year-old Mateo Goldman’s life twice in four years, after doctors diagnosed him with leukemia at age 8 and again last year.
“It was the only treatment for the type of leukemia he has,” said the boy's aunt, Amy Leone of Milford. “He needed to have a bone marrow transplant.”